Bueu, July 23, 2026 – The festival, which will take place from September 4 to 19, dedicates its retrospective programme and the new FICBUEU Notebook to examining how the short film format has been key to the evolution of one of the most influential genres in the history of cinema.
Science fiction will be one of the main thematic focuses of the 19th edition of the International Film Festival of Bueu (FICBUEU), to be held from September 4 to 19. The festival will dedicate its traditional retrospective to exploring more than 130 years of the genre’s history through short films, a journey that is complemented by the publication of a new volume in the FICBUEU Notebooks collection, written by researcher and filmmaker Irene de Lucas Ramón.
Through this approach, the festival highlights the essential role of the short film in shaping science fiction as a cinematic language. Far from being a secondary format, short films turned the genre into a space for experimentation where, from the earliest years of cinema to the present day, filmmakers from different periods tested new ways of representing the future, imagining other worlds, and exploring the limits of storytelling and visual creation.
The retrospective will bring together a selection of landmark works spanning different decades and styles, from cinema pioneers such as Georges Méliès, Alice Guy and Segundo de Chomón to contemporary filmmakers including Chris Marker, Guy Maddin, Coralie Fargeat, Chema García Ibarra and Jérémy Clapin. The programme will allow audiences to discover milestones in the history of the genre, such as cinema’s first robot, the first Spanish science fiction short film, space travel, dystopias, alien invasions, alternative futures, and reflections on memory and technology. It will also highlight science fiction’s ability to engage with other cinematic forms such as comedy, surrealism, the musical and experimental cinema.
A New FICBUEU Notebook by Irene de Lucas Ramón
As a complement to the programme, the festival will publish a new title in the FICBUEU Notebooks collection, devoted to exploring the relationship between science fiction and the short film format. The publication offers a journey through the conventions that have defined the genre since its beginnings and analyses how short films have played a decisive role in its evolution, establishing connections between different periods, filmmakers and ways of understanding cinematic imagination.
The volume is written by Irene de Lucas Ramón, who holds a PhD in Audiovisual Communication from the University of Valencia and is a researcher specialising in early cinema and the pioneering figures of film history. The author of books such as Alice Guy en el origen del cine and Helena Cortesina. Una cineasta pionera en España, she combines academic research with directing and screenwriting award-winning short films presented at national and international festivals, while also working extensively as a programmer, speaker and contributor to specialised publications.
With this retrospective and the new FICBUEU Notebook, the festival offers a broad perspective on one of the richest genres in film history and reaffirms the short film as a privileged space for innovation, experimentation and the ability to anticipate the future. This proposal reinforces the festival’s commitment to providing audiences with the tools to discover, contextualise and reflect on cinema beyond film screenings.
The publication of this volume continues the FICBUEU Notebooks collection, an annual series through which the festival contributes to film bibliography and historiography from the perspective of the short film. The previous volume, Destiny as Form. Images of Exile / Exiles of the Image, by José Manuel Mouriño, continued its journey throughout the past year with presentations at the Filmoteca de Galicia, Goethe-Institut Madrid, the Lenfest Center for the Arts, the Instituto Cervantes in New York, the Filmoteca de Andalucía and the Faculty of Philosophy of the Complutense University of Madrid. This trajectory demonstrates the collection’s impact beyond the festival itself and reinforces FICBUEU’s commitment to research, dissemination and critical reflection on cinema.
The publication of this notebook is carried out with the support of the Consellería de Cultura, Lingua e Xuventude, through the Secretaría Xeral da Lingua.
