Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema

Location	Buenos Aires, Argentina
Founded	1999
Website	http://festivales.buenosaires.gob.ar/2019/bafici/es/home

The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI, Spanish: Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente) is an international festival of independent films organized each year in the month of April, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The festival is managed by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Buenos Aires City. It is not officially affiliated with FIAPF, but it has become well known internationally.

History

The festival had its first edition in April 1999 and it was organized by the Secretaryship of Culture of the Government of Buenos Aires City. The festival is held in the most important movie theatres of Buenos Aires, but also feature free open-air screenings in parks and squares all over the city.

In the first year the festival had 146 guests, among them Francis Ford Coppola, Todd Haynes, Paul Morrissey and others. That year the festival screened more than 150 national and international films and had approximately 120,000 spectators. Since then the festival has been growing, reaching an audience of 1.1 million spectators in the 2013 edition.^{[citation needed]}

Nowadays the BAFICI feature more than 400 films, several activities were added over the years and many conferences and workshops are held every year. With a great number of spectators and guests, the festival is permanently added into the Buenos Aires list of cultural events.

Awards

The festival has several competitive sections of which the "International Competition" and the "Argentinian Competition" are the most important ones. Inside each competitive section a jury evaluates the films and select the winners of several awards, including: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Special Mentions. In the BAFICI the audiences vote, the feature-length film with the highest ratings given by the audience receives the Audience Award.

Since the third festival there have been awards given to Short films, which include Best Short Subject Film and Best Director.

International Competition Best Film Winners

Year	Film	Original Title	Director	Country
1999	After Life	Wandafuru Raifu	Hirokazu Koreeda	Japan
2000	Human Resources	Ressources humaines	Laurent Cantet	France
2001	Platform	Zhantai	Jia Zhangke	China
2002	Sailing Home	Tornando a casa	Vincenzo Marra	Italy
2003	Waiting for Happiness	Heremakono	Abderrahmane Sissako	Mauritania
2004	Pin Boy	Parapalos	Ana Poliak	Argentina
2005	The Sky Turns	El Cielo Gira	Mercedes Álvarez	Spain
2006	In the Pit	En el Hoyo	Juan Carlos Rulfo	Mexico
2007	In Between Days	방황의 날들	So Yong Kim	South Korea
2008	Intimidades de Shakespeare y Víctor Hugo		Yulene Olaizola	Mexico
2009	Our Beloved Month of August	Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto	Miguel Gomes	Portugal
2010	Alamar		Pedro González-Rubio	Mexico
2011	May they rest in revolt (Figures of wars)	Qu'ils reposent en révolte (Des figures de guerre)	Sylvain George	France
2012	Policeman	Ha-shoter	Nadav Lapid	Israel
2013	Berberian Sound Studio		Peter Strickland	United Kingdom
2014	Fifi Howls from Happiness	Fifi az khoshhali zooze mikeshad	Mitra Farahani	Iran
2015	Court	Tribunal	Chaitanya Tamhane	India
2016	The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis	La Larga Noche de Francisco Sanctis	Francisco Márquez, Andrea Testa	Argentina
2017	Niñato		Adrián Orr	Spain
2018	La Flor		Mariano Llinás	Argentina
2019	The Unicorn		Isabelle Dupuis, Tim Geraghty	United States
2020	Suspended due to COVID-19 pandemic
2021	Implosion	Implosión	Javier van de Couter	Argentina /  Chile
2022	Ongoing	-	-	-

Complete List of winners