MAFF focuses on innovation and the design of audiences to foster international audiovisual coproduction

It is holding its fifth edition with 26 projects selected from Latin America, the United States, France and Spain, and launches the new section MAFF Women Screen Industry.

MAFF (Malaga Festival Fund & Co-production event), one of the platforms for project financing, training (Learning & Training) and networking of reference in the festival circuit, returns to the Festival from the 21st to the 25th of March with an in-person format. This fifth edition focuses on promoting the innovation of business and production models of audiovisual work with international co-production potential.

This event, which brings together in an unprecedented manner the main international co-production funds, is conceived as a space for dialogue between the producers of Latin American and European feature films through which to foment artistic growth, innovation of business models and access to possible financial partners.

The new ambitious MAFF training programme called “Learning & Training” began in February with top class figures. The programme consists of a series of creative and financial advisory sessions to enable the teams of the 26 projects selected to acquire the tools needed to generate viable quality productions geared at the international market.

Previous online training sessions are supplemented with in-person activities led by different professionals, including Isona Admetlla, coordinator of the Berlinale-World Cinema Fund; Fernanda Rossi, dramaturgy theorist and scriptwriter; Christian Michel Salazar, from the Conference of Ibero-American Audiovisual and Cinematographic Authorities (CAACI); and Luciano Barisone, current director of Visions du Réel festival. In addition, there will be round tables focusing on subjects that specifically affect the Latin American industry, such as the presentation of international funds participating in the financing of Ibero-American projects and “Estéticas son políticas: Narrativas Contemporáneas en el audiovisual latinoamericano” [Aesthetics are politics: contemporary narratives in Latin Amercian audiovisuals], organised in collaboration with the New Latin American Film Foundation (FNCL) and the Secretariat for Ibero-American Cooperation (SEGIB).

With the objective of continuing to evolve, and following the incorporation of Portuguese and Spanish projects in its selection and the creation of the Social MAFF section, this year’s edition has created MAFF Women Screen Industry, aimed at achieving equity and transforming culture. This initiative is the result of the collaboration agreement between the Malaga Film Festival and the Andalusian Association of Women of Audiovisual Media (AAMMA), the Association of Women Filmmakers and of Audiovisual Media (CIMA) and Mujeres en V.O. [Women in Original Version].

The gender perspective will also be addressed in the programme with “Somos Diversas” [We are Diverse], a project fostered by the Ibero-American Federation of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences (FIACINE) and recently acknowledged with the Unesco Award for Cultural Diversity.

More information regarding the projects selected for MAFF 2022 is available here