The fourth edition of the Terres Travel Festival – Films & Creativity, specializing in tourist, landscape and travel cinema, was held in Tortosa and other places in Terres de l’Ebre between 4 and 12 September. In its official section it has valued 105 tourist films and 44 documentaries. More than 500 spectators attended the dozen scheduled screening sessions.
The short film Help by director Santiago Alcázar and produced by Madrid Destino has been awarded the Grand Prix. The film, released earlier this year, is part of Madrid’s tourist promotion audiovisuals. In fact, the story takes place in various spaces in the Spanish capital (the Royal Palace, the Plaza Mayor, the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum, etc.) and focuses on the municipal commitment to culture.
Among the Festival’s winners is also the documentary Our Gorongosa by director James Byrne, which won the award for Best Film Promoting Sustainability. The film, recorded in the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique last year, follows the trajectory of the young ecologist Dominique Gonçalves and explains the exemplary management of the natural heritage that has combined the environmental sustainability and economic activity of the 200,000 people living in the towns bordering the park. The award for Best production encouraging respect among cultures – Unesco has recognized the film Guardian Of The Forest by Alex Ichiro Okuma, a production about the Ainus, a community in northern Japan that has recently been recognized as one of the oldest in the country and around which tourist activities based on their cultural background are promoted.
Among the novelties of this edition of the Terres Travel Festival is the awarding of a special prize for the best production that stimulates the desire to travel again after the coronavirus pandemic. The new award, entitled Recomencem and sponsored by the Terres de l’Ebre Tourism Board, has recognized the Portuguese film The Time Has Come! of the director Telmo de Campos Martins and promoted by Turismo Centro de Portugal. “The Time has come” is an audiovisual created especially to promote travel in a context of pandemic restrictions. The work manages to put itself in the shoes of travelers and focuses on the need to promote the discovery of territories and socialization, despite the new context.
The list of winners of the 4th edition of the Terres Travel Festival can be consulted through this link.
The jury for this edition of the festival was made up of Yiannis Melitopoulos, director of the Amorgos Tourism Film Festival (Greece); Tsuyoshi Kigawa director of Japan World’s Tourism Film (Japan); Sandra Inkēna director of Tourfilm Riga (Latvia); Ruth Alejandre, journalist specializing in travel and gastronomy (Spain); Pere Cabañas, Marketing Director of Guitart Hotels (Spain); Miquel Segura, President of the UNESCO Igualada Association (Spain), Lee Gluckman Director of the US International Film & Video Festival (USA); Johan Driedonks Professor at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands); Hugo Marcos, Secretary General of the CIFFT (Portugal), Francisco Días, Professor of Tourism at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria (Portugal), Eduard Baldrís, Creative Director (Barcelona); Chriss Torres, Tourism Marketing Consultant (UK), Blanca Pérez-Sauquillo, Deputy Director of Foreign Tourism Marketing TURESPAÑA (Spain), Anna Borràs, Travel Journalist (Spain), Alexander V. Kammel, Director of CIFFT (Austria) .
Since its first edition (2017), the Terres Festival has had the support of the country’s university fabric, administrations and companies in the main sectors involved (tourism and audiovisual). The festival has the EFFE seal, a European recognition that focuses on artistic quality, the vocation of territorial structure and the promotion of creativity. Since November 2018, the Terres Travel Festival has also been a member of the CIFFT (Comité Internationale des Festivals de Films Touristiques) and is the only festival in Spain with this consideration.