Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema
The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema is an international festival of independent films organized each year in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
History
The festival had its first edition in April 1999 and it was organized by the Secretaryship of Culture of the Government of Buenos Aires City. The festival is held in the most important movie theatres of Buenos Aires, but also feature free open-air screenings in parks and squares all over the city.In the first year the festival had 146 guests, among them Francis Ford Coppola, Todd Haynes, Paul Morrissey and others. That year the festival screened more than 150 national and international films and had approximately 120,000 spectators. Since then, the festival has been growing, reaching an audience of 1.1 million spectators in the 2013 edition.
Nowadays, the BAFICI feature more than 400 films, several activities were added over the years and many conferences and workshops are held every year. With a great number of spectators and guests, the festival is permanently added into the Buenos Aires list of cultural events. The festival is managed by the Ministry of Culture of the City of Buenos Aires.
In 2024, MovieMaker named it one of the "25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World".
Awards
The festival has several competitive sections of which the "International Competition" and the "Argentinian Competition" are the most important ones. Inside each competitive section a jury evaluates the films and select the winners of several awards, including: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Special Mentions. In the BAFICI the audiences vote, the feature-length film with the highest ratings given by the audience receives the Audience Award.Since the third edition of the festival, there have been awards given to short films, which include Best Short Subject Film and Best Director.