The new Buddhist Film Festival of Catalonia (Festival de Cinema Budista de Catalunya, or FCBC) will launch in Barcelona in October, 2022. Organized by a consortium of Buddhist organizations there (Coordinadora Catalana d’Entitats Budistes [Catalan Coordinator of Buddhist Entities] or CCEB), this will be the very first Buddhist film festival in all of Spain. The International Buddhist Film Festival (IBFF) is programming this event on behalf of CCEB.
The FCBC will run October 19–23 at the prestigious Cinemes Verdi in Barcelona. Eight films will be screened, with Opening Night featuring Germany-based director Doris Dörrie (Enlightenment Guaranteed, Cherry Blossoms) in person to present her Greetings from Fukushima. Other selections include Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, Descending the Mountain, Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache, and Dear Earth, among others, all from recent IBFF or IBFF-programmed BuddhaFest programs. All films will be subtitled in Spanish or Catalan.
From Doris Dörrie’s Greetings from Fukushima:
![[black and white photo of young blond haired woman holding a broom, with right arm extended overhead, standing next to an older asian woman holding something, standing with a wrecked, open wooden house behind them, surrounded by cleaning supplies]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/fukushima-mon-amour-full-column.jpg "Greetings from Fukushima")
Representatives of CCEB approached Buddhist Film Foundation (BFF) late last year with an inquiry triggered by articles about BFF and IBFF in the Hong Kong-based online journal Buddhistdoor Global. That journal has been at the forefront of promoting Spanish language content to enable it to reach the rapidly growing number of Buddhists in Spain and the Americas. Buddhistdoor Global publishes a Spanish language edition of its website and newsletter, with the knowledge that Spanish is the native language of over 500 million people, second only to Mandarin, and is the world’s most widely spoken Romance language.
The IBFF is no stranger to Spanish. IBFF 2008 was presented in Mexico City, with all twenty-five selected films translated into Spanish for subtitles projected on screen. That IBFF had the largest attendance of any IBFF, with over 50,000 people joining the opening day ceremonies in the Zocalo, the city’s historic central square, and the films screening in five theaters over ten days, including the Cineteca Nacional de Mexico.
IBFF 2008 MEXICO CITY:
![[enormous crowd in a plaza with canopied areas and individuals with bright yellow fringed hats in the foreground]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/zocalo-crowd-ibff2008mexico.jpg "IBFF 2008 MEXICO CITY")
“The mission of the FCBC is very much aligned with our own here at Buddhist Film Foundation,” said BFF executive director Gaetano Kazuo Maida. He adds, “their stated purpose is ‘to foster knowledge of the essential Buddhist principles via the language of cinema’… I couldn’t have said it better myself!”
