The 22nd Seville European Film Festival will double down on an expanded big-tent model — citywide venues, broader audiences and a beefed-up industry platform — as the European Film Awards nominations return to the city.
Running Nov. 7–15, the 2025 edition opens with Anders Thomas Jensen’s “The Last Viking,” toplining Mads Mikkelsen, and pays tribute with Giraldillos of Honor to four cross-generational heavyweights: Alberto Rodríguez (“Marshland,” “Los tigres”).
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“This year is one of consolidation — showing off the city, and talking about European cinema in its full breadth,” festival director Manuel Cristóbal says. “The big change happened last year,” he argues. “This year is scale, reliability and usefulness.”
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Cristóbal defines “consolidation” in concrete, local terms. “Above all, it’s about bringing the festival closer to the city and taking pride in it,” he says. “We also want to offer European cinema in the widest sense of the word — it’s not a niche and it’s far more varied than we’re often led to believe.”
A new competitive European shorts section
For the first time, Seville’s Official Selection introduces a competitive European shorts section spanning live-action and animation — a talent pipeline that complements 2024’s launch of Rampa for emerging directors.
The festival also rolls out an immersive cinema showcase at the Cartuja Center CITE, cementing a strategic alliance with the venue. With a 180-square-meter screen and Meyer sound, Cartuja Center represents the technical flagship for marquee moments.
The outward-facing push is also ceremonial. On Nov. 8, the festival hosts a reception at the Real Alcázar palace for the Puerta América prize, spotlighting European films representing their countries in the Oscar race.
The return to the city of the EFA nominations on Nov. 18 is freighted with symbolism. “It means a great deal,” Cristóbal says. “Above all, the festival is back after a crisis brought on by the previous municipal team — and not only it is back in Seville, it’s back at the Real Alcázar, one of the city’s most magical sites.”
European Film Exhibition Conference
Frame Sevilla, the festival’s professional hub, scales up to 30-plus sessions — a curated spread of keynotes, case studies, finance labs and networking.
The headline innovation is the inaugural European Film Exhibition Conference, organized with Spain’s exhibitors’ federation FECE, delivering four blocks of discussions that will feed into a public report on policy, funding levers and audience evolution.
A heavyweight roster of E.U. and national entities — including UNIC, Eurocinema, Italy’s ANEC and Spain’s ICAA — will attend this industry event. “Exhibitors keep theaters open — we have to listen to them and treat them with respect,” Cristóbal says.
Alliances and growth paths
Cristóbal underscores new and deepening partnerships. “We’re looking for partners and, above all, to be useful to industry and films,” he says.
Seville boasts deals with European Film Promotion on Future Frames program and has teamed with Spain’s rights management organisation Egged to boost the visibility of producers’ work.
On its industry side, the festival will also cast an eye north with “A Look at Denmark,” syncing with opening-night “The Last Viking” and the recent awards surge for Magnus von Horn’s “The Girl with the Needle.”
In tandem with the Danish Film Institute and Denmark’s embassy, Frame will unpack the Nordic production-financing model and dissect recent co-production workflows.
Netflix joins for sessions on innovation and sustainability, while Secuoya Content Group and Sevilla Film & Events present Sevilla Content City, a local stages-and-services push.
Returning finance roundtables El Parné/Show Me the Money” offer first-look strategies for packaging and closing deals. The discovery pipeline is reinforced by EFP’s Future Frames — in partnership with Karlovy Vary and spun out to Hamburg and Seville — bringing young helmers into the SEFF ecosystem with shorts spotlights and talent meetings.
An opening-night comedy
For Spanish distributor Avalon, Seville’s choice of an opening-night comedy such as “The Last Viking” signals commercial intent.
“We’re especially thrilled that a festival of this caliber is betting on a comedy as its opening film,” says Avalon founder Stefan Schmitz. “This consecrates it as a potential event movie for a broad audience — and a major promotional boost ahead of the commercial release in March.”
An across-the-board presence of Spanish and Andalusian productions
Spanish and Andalusian signatures thread the lineup. Rodríguez collects his Giraldillo as “Los tigres,” a Movistar Plus+ original film, distributed in Spain by Buena Vista International, bows as a Special Screening; while Rafael Cobos, Rodríguez’s longtime co-writer, brings his feature debut thriller “Golpes,” a Vaca Films co-production with France’s Playtime, to Panorama Andaluz sidebar.
Elsewhere, Andalusian non-fiction ranges from gypsy people’s history vindication (“Pendaripen,” by Alfonso Sánchez) to art portraits (“Luis Gordillo. Manual de instrucciones”) and music-driven journeys (“Fandango”), amplifying what Seville frames as a “transversal” presence of southern voices across sections.
European auteurs and emergent names
European auteurs and emergent names collide across strands. In Official Selection, animation sits alongside live-action via Sylvain Chomet’s “A Magnificent Life,” while films from high-profile festivals alumni filter in — among them Hafsia Herzi’s “La petite dernière,” with Cannes best-actress winner Nadia Melliti; Dag Johan Haugerud’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner “Dreams (Sex Love)”; and the posthumous Laurent Cantet work “Enzo,” completed by Robin Campillo.
Meanwhile, Michał Kwieciński’s lavish biopic “Chopin, Chopin!,” sold by Playtime and acquired for Spain by LaZona Pictures, closes the festival out of competition.
In the Embrujo sidebar – formerly Las Nuevas Olas – Seville frames bolder language-benders, from Momoko Seto’s dialogue-free eco-fable “Dandelion’s Odyssey” to Sofía Petersen’s 16mm reverie “Olivia.”
Rampa corrals first and second features that straddle genre and personal history: Croatian helmer Hana Jušić’s Locarno-laureled “God Will Not Help,” Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.’s Cannes prized “My Father’s Shadow” and Déni Oumar Pitsaev’s “Imago,” a Cannes’ French Touch/Oeil d’Or prize-winner.
“We need films for different audiences — not every title for everyone, but everyone should find their film,” Cristóbal says.
That is consistent with Seville’s reinforced promise to be a launchpad for both auteur discoveries and broader-audience titles that roll out after the festival, for example Mediaset España’s “Todos los lados de la cama,” a new entry in the hit musical saga, and Daniel Sánchez Arévalo’s “Rondallas,” a Studiocanal-Bambú dramedy distributed by Beta Fiction Spain.
