He Daroca & prison film fest (www.festivalcinedaroca.com) has received a total of 1,012 large short films, after the end of the registration period on March 31, beating the absolute record of participation of 1,006 works received in 2024. According to the organization, they are short “of great quality that have come from more than 50 countries on the five continents.” Voting can be held from September 1 to 30.
This initiative, which enjoys excellent health and international prestige after 13 editions, is considered a unique festival in the world, having been created entirely within a penitentiary center with the collaboration of the City Council and the region, as well as numerous companies and, ultimately, the population of Daroca as a whole.
The Daroca & Prison Film Fest has received a total of 1,012 large short films. “Taking into account that the period for sending works has passed this year from three months to just a month and a half, it is an incredible number that has broken the absolute record of works received and that indicates that we continue on the right track to internationally consolidate the festival,” they said from the organization.
“Great quality” shorts, some of them selected and awarded at international festivals (Goya, Cannes, Berlin, Toront Lebanon, as well as Spain and the rest of Europe (Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, among others).
In addition, this year, they point out from the organization, “works have been received for the first time from countries such as Ireland, Slovenia, Bolivia, Taiwan, Croatia, Honduras and South Africa.”
“All of them are deserving of being selected and moving on to the next phase, but you have to make a first screen. The chosen ones will directly become viewed and voted by all cinephile internet users, through the web, throughout the month of September,” they said.
From the vote on the Internet, the selection of the finalist short films that will opt for each of the following awards will be: public prize for the best fiction short film and the best documentary short film, as well as the awards for the best short young man and the best penitentiary short. Also, in parallel and independent, the jury will choose the finalists who will opt for the prizes for the best fiction short and the best short documentary.
Apart chapter deserves the Aragonese awards for the best fiction and documentary short film, to which an always high participation of great works carried out in our land, which reflects the great health of the Aragonese audiovisual sector.
And finally, on them, the jury will decide the winners of all awards, except those awarded by the public that will result from the sum of the votes obtained through the vote on the Internet, and that granted by the audience attending Daroca and its penitentiary center.
The journal Bat record for participation after its twentieth anniversary and premieres new website
The other cultural-strella project is also celebrated, together with Daroca & Prison Film Fest, created within the Daroca Penitentiary Center. La Oca Loca magazine (www.revistalaocaloca.com), founded on the cultural area of the aforementioned penitentiary center in 2004, has exceeded this year all its historical records of annual participation and collaboration.
Recall that, in this Single Digital Forum in Spain, they regularly write and collaborate, elbow with elbow, internal and internal of 63 prisons of Spain and 6 abroad (three from Argentina and one from Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia), as well as a template of 175 writers from outside the penitentiary field.
La Oca Loca magazine was founded on the cultural area in the penitentiary center in 2004
In the last year, more than 140 original articles and works of 128 inmates and internal areas have been received and published in it and a similar number sent by exterior writers. And it is that only in the literary competitions of poetry, script and micro-reference (in its 15th annual edition-in which the San Jorge de Zaragoza University and the Aragonese Association of Writers collaborate) as well as in the cooking recipes (in its 14th edition-in which the social work La Caixa collaborates and the Topi Cooking School of Zaragoza-), all the records have been broken: Almost 600 works presented to the contest, with more than 200 from the penitentiary field.
“It has been 20 intense years publishing the articles of a huge template of collaborators that has been growing progressively. This remarkable increase in activity made the update and development of a new website much more necessary, which conveniently welcomed and how all articles and collaborations deserve” according to sources of the organization.
And continuing: “And if in 2009 we provided a special thanks to those who were a decisive part of their design and development on the Internet, our friends of https://doscuartos.com/ and https://ww.samuelaguilera.com/; now in 2025, our special thanks corresponds to our friends of https://virtualcivan.es/, who have carried out a splendid Appreciate, wearing our dear crazy Oc. ”
This pioneer digital magazine in Spain has been recognized with the National Prize for the best penitentiary magazine, awarded by the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions; the “Owl” award, awarded by the Aragonese Association of Friends of the Book; and the special mention in the “Ebropolis” awards for good citizen practices, awarded by the City Council and the University of Zaragoza and the “Cine and Health” award, awarded by the Government of Aragon, among others.
The Penitentiary Center’s film workshop turns 20
Also, this pioneer cultural initiative in Spain, created in 2005 with the collaboration of the Fuentes de Ebro Film Festival, is celebrated for its twentieth anniversary.
This workshop, whose artistic direction is currently under the wise baton of actress Mª José Moreno and the film director, Rubén Pérez Barrena, already has more than 25 short films made with numerous awards and selections obtained, in addition to fulfilling an important cultural, formative function and help to reintegration for the inmates of the Daroca penitentiary center.
Great figures from the film and audiovisual sector have passed through the film workshop
He has passed and acted in his works, great figures of the Aragonese and national film and audiovisual sector such as Paula Ortiz, Carmen Paris, Benito Rabal, Jorge Asín, Nacho Rubio, Antón García Abril, Fernando Esteso, Jorge Sanz, Luis Larrodera, Marianico El Short, Fernando Colomo, Guillermo Montesinos, Luisa Gavasa, José Carabias and Ana María Vidal, among others; and producing companies such as Sintroua, Timeline, Aragon TV or impact Productions, which have helped us in our recordings, creating a unique and enriching symbiosis both for them and for the inmates of the penitentiary center.
Hence, the subsequent creation, within the framework of the Daroca & Prison Fest Festival of the “Penitentiary Centers” award for the best short cut in them, “with which we intend the dissemination and export of this model of our film workshop to other penitentiary centers, and whose fruits are also exhibited on the website www.revistalaocaloca.com as well as in www.festive.festive. of the organization.
Historical Collaboration and Friendship Bonds between Daroca and its Penitentiary Center
The involvement of the city of Daroca in these and other initiatives propelled from the penitentiary center has been the usual tonic for years. It is enough to contemplate the fourteen editions of Daroca & Prison Film Fest, the International Online Festival of Daroca Cinema, unique in the world organized from a penitentiary center, in which the region and the City Council of Daroca are main sponsors, and which has the most absolute collaboration of this population loving cinema.
This also has been reflected this year with the appointment by the City Council of Daroc Penitentiary in Aragon, and, in 2022, Javier Mesa, manager of the training area of the Penitentiary and Creator Center, since 2004, of all the aforementioned cultural programs.
