Skyline Benidorm Film Festival honors actress Cayetana Guillén Cuervo at the opening gala

The auditorium of Benidorm Cultural Center was the setting last night for the opening gala of the ninth edition of the Skyline Benidorm Film Festival. This year's event brings together the best of the national and international short film industry. Over a week, the festival will feature workshops, meetings with creators, short film screenings, and a host of parallel activities aimed at fostering the exchange of ideas and the development of new creators and talent. The Mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, and the Councilor for Culture, Jaime Jesús Pérez, along with other municipal representatives, including the regional deputy José Ramón González de Zárate, supported the Skyline at this opening ceremony, where actress and presenter Cayetana Guillén Cuervo received the Skyliner 2025 Award in recognition of her contribution to the short film sector and for her support and promotion through the Spanish Version-SGAE Short Film Competition. The Festival's opening gala, presented by actress Ana Conca and screenwriter Marta Casielles, began at around 8:00 p.m. and drew a large crowd. This is the first edition in which the official opening of the event takes place at the Cultural Center. In addition to the presentation of the short films in the competition and those that will be screened throughout the different days, the presentation of the Skyliner 2025 Award, and the official speeches, the audience also enjoyed various musical performances and the premiere of the short film "(No)Body," by Sonia Bautista Alarcón, shot between Benidorm and the La Mancha towns of La Roda and Casas de Guijarro.
The Mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, publicly applauded the importence that the Skyline Benidorm Film Festival has already achieved in just nine editions, "a festival that has established itself and is growing very well, bringing short films, such an important product for the audiovisual industry, to the general public." The mayor thanked "the team led by Bea Hernández and the Department of Culture for their commitment to promoting this event from day one and bringing it to where it is today."
"The name says it all. Our skyline, our city, is a great film set," said Toni Pérez, "a city that also has a soul and for which cinema has been and continues to be such an important element."Finally, the mayor congratulated Cayetana Guillén Cuervo for the recognition and thanked her for "how much you have done for cinema" throughout her professional career, a sector he compared to Benidorm itself because "we know how to do things very well, but beyond pleasing the general public, our goal is also to continue being useful to the society to which we owe ourselves. And cinema, without a doubt, also contributes to making society much better," he concluded.
The director of "Skyline," Beatriz Hernández, invited the public to enjoy the screenings and other activities that will be held around the event throughout this week. Regarding the 2025 Skyliner Award, she emphasized that Cayetana Guillén Cuervo "is a benchmark in the audiovisual scene and a staunch defender of cinema in all its formats, especially in the short film category."
Rocío Saiz, singer, actress, and close friend of Guillén Cuervo, was in charge of presenting her with the award, which the actress and presenter received with great emotion and a standing ovation from the audience. “These moments are true happiness,” said the award winner, after confessing that “I attach great importance to awards because it means that your work, your effort, transcends and is recognized by others.”
Cayetana Guillén wanted to dedicate the award to the entire Versión Española team, both those who currently make up the team and those who have worked with it throughout its history. She also emphasized the importance of short films: “Short films are a genre in themselves, and that's why it's fantastic that this festival, as we have done at Versión Española for the past 22 editions, supports creators,” she concluded, before inviting a large group of friends—among whom was Benidorm Fest winner Blanca Paloma—to celebrate the award on stage.

Festival data

The ninth edition of the Skyline Benidorm Film Festival will take place in various venues throughout the city until next Saturday, April 5th, registering unprecedented growth this year in the festival's history. Specifically, more than 800 short films have been entered for this edition, representing a 27% increase over last year; 497 scripts have been submitted for the competition—51.5% more than in 2024—and there are 53 projects in the Shortpitch competition, which is 47.2% more than in the last edition.
Of these more than 800 short films submitted, the organization has selected 26 finalists in three categories: fiction, animation, and documentary. The following are the finalists: ‘Ángulo Muerto’ (Dead Angle), by Cristian Beteta; ‘Capitanes’ (Captains), by Kevin Castellano and Edu Hirschfeld; ‘Carmela’ (Carmela), by Vicente Mallols; ‘Co-Haunting’ (Co-Haunting), by Paula Sánchez, Adrián Carande, and Pepe Rico; ‘Cholera’ by José Luis Lázaro; ‘When the Flood Comes’ by Antonio Lomas Domingo; ‘Cura Sana’ by Lucía G. Romero; ‘From Sucre’ by Clàudia Cedó; ‘A Midsummer Night’s Tale’ by María Herrera; ‘The Prince’ by Alex Sardá; ‘The Showman’ by Cristian Martínez; ‘The Buits’ by Isa Luengo, Sofía Esteve and Marina Freixa Roca; ‘Felina’ by María Lorenzo; ‘The Tattooed Girl’ by Elisa Lanzas; ‘The Night Inside’ by Antonio Cuesta; ‘The Girls’ by Laura Obradors; ‘The Kayar Canoes’ by Álvaro Hernández Blanco; ‘Map of Emotional Geography’ by Julu Martínez and Candela Megido; ‘My Game’ by David Navarro Bravo; ‘The Palace of Rape’ by Kote Camacho; ‘Seeds’ from Kivu by Néstor López and Carlos Valle; Carmen Álvarez Muñoz's 'Tesoro'; Javier Celay's 'Tito'; Manuel Manrique's 'Una Cabeza en la Pared'; Alba Lozano's 'Utländsk'; and Borja Escribano's 'Violetas' are the short films competing for this year's awards.
The Skyline Benidorm Film Festival remains one of the few festivals in Spain to award a selection fee of 200 euros to each film selected in its official national section. Since 2022, it has held the distinction of being an official qualifier for the Goya Awards. The finalists will have the opportunity to compete for prizes valued at 11,000 euros, while the festival will also award a 1,500-euro prize for the best short film script, for which 15 finalists are eligible, thanks to an agreement with DAMA. And, once again, there will also be an award for the best "Short Pitch," or short film project in development. This section includes ten other finalist works and will provide a cash prize to facilitate their filming, valued at 22,000 euros.
It also gives visibility to foreign productions and young talents. Thus, in the International Section, which this year Cuba is the guest country, six short films from countries such as China, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and the United Kingdom will compete. The Ibero-American Section brings together six works from Peru, Mexico, Portugal, Cuba, and Chile. Finally, the Young Filmmakers Section promotes new voices with eight selected short films.
As in previous editions, the festival will maintain the "Cinema for All" section in its program this year, offering screenings with subtitles for the deaf and audio descriptions for audiences with visual impairments, to ensure that everyone can enjoy it. This initiative is promoted in collaboration with ONCE (National Commission for the Promotion of Film and Television), whose local and provincial representatives, Vicente Vázquez, Estela Medina, and Mari Luz Méndez, also participated in last night's opening gala.
One of this year's new features is the creation of Prisma, an initiative to connect and strengthen the professional fabric of the short film sector by serving as a link between audiovisual stakeholders and promoting networking and the development of new projects. It was created with the intention of internationalizing the Skyline Industry Conference, which has been held for the past six years, as well as serving as a link between production companies and short film projects at any stage of production development.
The festival program, screening spaces, and other activities are available on the festival's official website.