FCAT 2019. XVI Edición del Festival de Cine Africano Tarifa-Tánger

Cinema will reunite the continents of Africa and Europe thanks to the 16th Tarifa-Tangier African Film Festival (FCAT-2019) which will be held between 26 April and 4 May in the two cities. This meeting with African film is thus being held simultaneously in Africa and Europe.

Casa África is collaborating with FCAT again this year with the aim of promoting African film productions in Spain and serving as a bridge to promote young directors from the neighbouring continent.

Casa África and FCAT have collaborated for ten years to encourage the diffusion of African film in Spain. As part of this collaboration, Casa África has facilitated the creation of Spanish subtitles for many of the audiovisual works that have participated in the official sections of the festival. In addition, over the past few years it has facilitated the presence of African filmmakers to enable their professional promotion through the festival.

In 2019, for the first time, Casa África is also awarding a prize for the best documentary during the annual festival awards. The documentary genre is active and growing in Africa but can struggle to find funding. Documentaries can be produced by smaller technical and human teams, which favours the expansion of this genre in Africa. In addition, African documentary makers are showing a growing interest in creating works which denounce certain synergies of the past and try to make changes.

The low budgets that characterise some of these productions have not prevented them from bringing to light issues with great social relevance. To support the production of African documentary films is also to support a very educational genre that provides important keys to help us read Africa and review its history.

This award has two main objectives. The first is to continue to promote cinema as an educational tool which raises awareness by covering current affairs and social issues which are relevant to Africa. The second objective is to help promote promising new independent African documentary cinema makers through the well-established and internationally respected platform of FCAT, thus helping to open up great opportunities for these filmmakers in the future.

The FCAT 2019 Programme can be found on the festival website.