Seminci

Valladolid International Film Festival is a film festival held annually in Valladolid, Spain since 1956. Nowadays the festival is regarded as one of the most important in the specialty of independent film and auteur film.It has introduced directors and cinematographers who were previously unknown there. Spanish audiences became acquainted with names such as Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, Andrzej Wajda, Federico Fellini, Ermanno Olmi and Yilmaz Güney from the launch pad offered by Valladolid. The works of film-makers of the standing of Roberto Rossellini, Stanley Donen, Max Ophüls, Ken Loach, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujirō Ozu and Aardman Animations could be enjoyed and studied in the sections dedicated to their major works, many on view for the first time in Spain. Valladolid, through various loopholes in state censorship, was able to present films that would otherwise have been impossible to see in Spain. An award or an enthusiastic reception from the audience and the critics meant, on numerous occasions, that the official state bodies gave the go-ahead to certain films which Francisco Franco's regime considered out of line with their ideology.