Dear amigos,

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Spanish Film Festival in Australia I am excited to present the biggest festival of Spanish cinema ever in this country with over 30 features, documentaries and short films representing the cutting-edge of current Spanish cinema.

It has been an honour and a privilege to share the cinema of my country with Australian audiences for the last ten years! Filmmaking in Spain has been through an enormous period of change in this time resulting in an industry incredibly strong with 150 films made in the last year, including 40 documentaries. I have seen over 100 of them myself in choosing the best films to showcase in this festival!

Spain, as a filmmaking centre is looking outwards more, working with other countries through coproductions, and telling stories about our place in the world. At the same time, we are fiercely defending our identity as we encourage our filmmakers to tell their stories. This year it is an absolute thrill to present the first feature film made in Basque in 18 years, as well as films in Catalan.

Looking back at the industry I have chosen to focus on one of our most interesting and controversial filmmaker with a retrospective of nine features from the 50 year career of producer/writer/director Elias Querejeta and a new documentary about his work.

We celebrate current filmmaking with Australian premieres of 18 features and 4 documentaries and we look to the future with two programs of short films, one of which is from the Canary Islands – a rare location for a film industry, but producing amazing films including the Goya Award winner for Animation this year.

It is also a good time to look back at ten years of celebrating Spanish cinema in Australia and think of all the people who have made our existence possible – the filmmakers, volunteers, sponsors, designers, cinema staff, media, friends but most of all, you, the audience! We wouldn’t exist without your interest and support year after year.

The word “passion” so often comes up when people talk about Spain and I am so happy to share this passion and our cinema with you in Australia. For this and many many more reasons I would like to dedicate this special 10th anniversary to you all.

See you at the cinemas!