PLAY - Lisbon International Children and Youth Film Festival

ongoing

Under the format of a 9-day festival for children and young people, each year, PLAY Festival provides more than 15 000 children from 1 year up to 16 years old, their parents, and their teachers the opportunity to watch the best Films for children, meet film professionals, and participate in film-making workshops. The festival takes place every February in Lisbon. With 12 editions behind it, PLAY Festival is already a benchmark in Portugal's festival scene, having encouraged other festivals to follow its lead by creating sections for younger audiences in their programmes. The market of European cinema for children is a significant segment of the European film industry with important growth potential, educational and social added value. Despite that, the circulation of films beyond national borders is a fragmented and complex phenomenon that faces important barriers as language, cultural differences, and specific distribution networks and costs. With this in mind, the overall objective of the Play Festival project is to offer an innovative, engaging, and entertaining platform for presenting, exploring, and promoting non-national European cinema for children. The project will propose Festival activities such as film screenings, Masterclasses, Workshops, and Professional Encounters; Educational programme for schools; engaging civil society in Festival activities and year-long Itinerant tours of film screenings.