By Alejandro Contreras Culturamas www.culturamas.es With his first short film Diva (2004), about the life of a homosexual Muslim trying to survive in Barcelona, Mantilla won himself the attention of the Cannes Film Festival, which selected his work to be displayed in the week of criticism, and also at the Sundance festival. After a couple of short films he directed his first feature, Next to Babylon (2008) for which he was awarded with the award for best director of Ã...

Trained at Torino Film Lab in colaboration with Script & Pitch, the feature film project CANAL written by Sebastian Mantilla from Spain and produced by Bianca Smanio from Novart Media Films, has been one of five europeans selected to participate at PUENTES taking place in Buenos Aires from March 26-30, 2009 within the framework of the BAFICI (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente) taking place from March 25 - April 5, 2009. Along with CANAL, PUENTES Europe...

As an innovative initiative, the organisers of DOCUMENTA 08 and the EGEDA Digital team have decided to create the Filmotech.com Award, through which the festival will come to life on the Internet, beyond the official page. In this way the makers of the works in the Competitive Sections can, if they wish, present their films on the Net so that, with all the guarantees of legality, they can be downloaded from anywhere on the globe. Those directors who opt to do so can compete for the Filmotech.com...

Documenta Madrid is an international film festival dedicated exclusively to documentary film. Its offices are located in the capital of Spain and it is organized by the City of Madrid. It is presently the city's most widely-attended festival. The festival was born for the purpose of strengthening and disseminating the documentary genre, in so far as it understood to be a reflection of the social, cultural, economic, artistic, environmental, and other realities that exist in the world. From the...