Leiria Film Fest with 57 films for four days
The international festival of short films in Leiria had been growing every year since its debut, in 2013. Last year, the biggest edition ever was projected, but the pandemic forced to cancel a large part of the program and adapt the format to the online display.
In 2021, with sessions at the Teatro Miguel Franco and mimo (Museum of the Moving Image), it will be possible to have an in-person audience again, even with seats reduced to one third, which will allow to see results and feel the feedback from the spectators, again close to us. , and this is important.
Even so, the LFF once again received a considerable number of candidates for selection, about half a thousand, of which 27 will participate in the competitive sections, dedicated to fiction, animation and documentary. The remaining 30 include special sections, such as the one dedicated to Guinean Welket Bungué, and a tribute to director Ricardo Portela, who died in 2021.
The short films arrive from Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Canada, Slovakia, Albania, Iceland, Guinea-Bissau and Hungary and ten of them are shown for the first time in Portugal, three of which are absolute premieres.
The organization counts on the presence of 13 directors to the contest and a strong public presence, emphasizes Bruno Carnide:
“Initially I asked myself: ‘Will there be people in the room or not?’. But we received information from the ticket office that there is a lot of demand and that surprised me. There are many people eager to return to a cinema, serving this almost as an excuse to be with friends again “.
LFF 2021 winners are announced on the afternoon of May 30.
