https://www.festivalprotesta.cat/wp-content/uploads/PROTESTA-2025.pdf
Protesta is an international film festival of social criticism that aims to do its bit to help transform society through cinema. We want to transform it constructively, positively and creatively, making the festival a true celebration of denunciation cinema.
Agnès Vardà, Alice Rohrwacher, Neus Ballús Montserrat, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, Ken Loach, Kelly Reichardt, Nadine Labaki, and we could name many more. They are filmmakers who define a certain way of understanding and working with cinema. An exquisite cinema that also does politics, as we also want to do from the festival. As our favorite grandfather, Ken Loach, says: “all cinema is political”. Cinema is a way of shedding light on hidden realities and raising the volume of silenced voices. It is a medium that appeals to emotions in a very direct way: cinema makes you feel, it allows you to get into the shoes of people who suffer injustices, and we believe that, too often, what society lacks is precisely feeling and empathizing more. And what better letter of introduction for the festival than our reference voices in cinema? Politically committed people, who make authentic cinematic gems, who appeal for a new way of making cinema and of making festivals: feminist, transversal, intersectional, and with care at the center, without competing, without the glamour of the capitalist orbit of Hollywood, an authentic cinema, of ordinary people and socially committed, with small and local stories that become global, that moves towards equality of opportunities in all fields of film production, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and length etc. We want to be a useful tool for society and that generates a transformative effect.
And we want to be a festival involved in the territory and cultural and social projects, but above all connected to authentic social networks, people. A speaker of denunciation through films and all kinds of activities.
We also reject the precariousness of the sector, filled with people who work for free or underpaid, and we oppose the way capitalist festivals are held, copied from the most toxic Hollywood, with the superficiality of red carpets. We, the carpets, want them to rise to show so much abuse and violence suffered for many years.
We want to reach all audiences, especially those with more difficulties accessing this type of cultural offer. Often film festivals that show various problems also do not end up reaching the audience that could feel more identified with them. For this reason, Protesta is based and screens the majority of its films in the Remei neighborhood of Vic, with a high percentage of the population with few economic resources.
This is our commitment as a festival; to show the public a cinema that fights against injustices through art. Of course, the Protesta will be a party, the party of social cinema, with many surprises that will make us laugh, dance and even sing!