Documentary lovers are in for a treat in Madrid. The 6th International Documentary Film Festival, DOCUMENTA MADRID 09, is being held May 1st – 9th. Filmotech.com can’t miss this important event, so again this year, we are back to give an award, with 3,000 euros in prize money, to the participating documentary in the festival which is most viewed on our website.

In this edition of DOCUMENTA MADRID, 108 films, of the total of 1078 entered, are being shown in the various competitive sections from 40 different countries. For the first time in the history of the event, documentary buffs can enjoy a Competitive Section filled with first-time premières in Spain. With this new feature, along with growing public interest and the variety of participating films, has made Documenta Madrid one of the best-known Spanish film festivals on an international level.

DOCUMENTA MADRID 09 is an International Documentary Film Festival, organized by the City of Madrid, designed to strengthen and disseminate the documentary genre as a reflection of the social, cultural, economic, artistic and environmental realities existing on our planet. Furthermore, with its variety of nationalities and their different points of view, the festival has become an annual gathering of professionals, audiovisual creators, and the public looking for innovative offerings of this genre.

The programming of DOCUMENTA MADRID is structured into three large groups: Competitive Sections, Informative Sections, and Parallel Activities. In this edition, from 1078 aspiring films for the Competitive Sections, 108 have been selected.

The Competitive Sections are divided into three groups: National Competition, dedicated to mainly Spanish production feature-length and short-film-length documentaries, Documentary Reporting Competition, for those works which contribute an informative point of view on current affairs, and an Original Documentary Competition, oriented towards avante-garde and experimental films from this genre.

However, the 108 films in the competitive sections make up only a part of the documentaries being projected in the festival, which also offers numerous titles in its various informative sections. Among these stands out the Manoel de Oliveira retrospective and the emerging German documentary filmmaker Andres Veiel, who is offering a Master Class during the festival. “The Oblique Laugh” section explores connections between the documentary genre and comedy, and this edition is also presenting new entries in the “Documenta Goes to School” and “Docuadventure 09” series. The latter, dedicated to keeping alive the anthropological documentary, offering the most curious spectators the unforeseen experiences by the courageous explorers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Beaumont Schoedsack, creators of the first version of King Kong.

The most avid documentary film fans also have access to more than 2,500 documentaries via the “Documentary Archive”, located in the Centro Madrileño de Imágenes. The most nostalgic, however, will have a must-see event in the “Super-8 Nights” at the Club Tempo, two nights in which the rhythm of live music accompanies the old super-8 films shown to the public on the big screen.