The 40th edition of the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG), to be held from June 6 to 14, 2025, announces the official selection of the productions that will participate in the Ibero-American Feature Documentary competition. Feature-length documentaries produced by Latin American countries, Spain and Portugal are considered for this category.
The awards consist of a Mayahuel statuette and $200,000.00 Mexican pesos awarded to the majority production company for Best Ibero-American Documentary and a Mayahuel statuette for Best Direction and Best Cinematography.
The Ibero-American Feature Documentary section is recognized by AMPAS, so the winning documentary may be considered for an Oscar nomination.
LIST OF SELECTED
The Savannah and the Mountain (2024)
Paulo Carneiro
Portugal | Uruguay
The community of Covas do Barroso, in northern Portugal, discovers that the British company, Savannah Resources, plans to build Europe's largest open-pit lithium mine just meters from their homes. Faced with this imminent threat, the people decide to organize and expel the company from their land.
The sunset of the crickets (2025)
Gonzalo Almeida
Argentina
Follows a group of teenagers in a suburban neighborhood in Argentina, near a golf course, where they sneak out to find lost balls to sell, dreaming of becoming golfers. As they wait for an opportunity to play, they share their desires and discuss the future, wars and time travel.
Cais (2024)
Safira Moreira
Brazil
Two months after the death of her mother Angélica, Safira travels in search of her mother in other landscapes. On a river route, the film travels through cities bathed by the Paraguaçu and Alegre rivers to immerse itself in new perspectives on memory, time, birth, life and death.
Copan (2025)
Carine Wallauer
Brazil | France
In the heart of São Paulo stands Copan, a concrete structure designed by Oscar Niemeyer, with the smooth shapes of a large wave and more than five thousand residents. A building that is the perfect microcosm for observing how politics is conducted in Brazil. As each political movement is observed by Carine, the film's director and a resident of Copan, the documentary shows how the personal choices of each individual impact politics, as well as the reverse path: demonstrating that the collective decisions made by political leaders directly impact our individual relationships.
Chroma (2025)
Manuel Abramovich
Argentina | Germany | Austria
In a chroma green studio, a group of people ask questions and gather to imagine other ways of being together. In this green space, the norm is suspended. A project about the characters we play to present ourselves to others. An invitation to rewrite the scripts of our lives.
The flamenco guitar of Yerai Cortés (2024)
Antón Álvarez
Spain
The story unfolds through Yerai Cortés, a rising star of Spanish flamenco. Antón Álvarez (aka C. Tangana) met him at a party, where Cortés was playing guitar for Montse Cortés under the Starlight Satellites. Known for his refined and unique style, Cortés' life is marked by a dark family secret and a sadness he longs to share with the world.
Echo of light (2024)
Misha Vallejo Prut
Ecuador | Germany
Misha, a documentary photographer, immerses himself in his family history, using his grandfather's camera to recreate a family album, trying to connect with a man he never knew. Confronted with the absence of father figures, he reclaims spaces that were once forbidden to his family. Through her lens secrets and violence emerge, but the fluidity of memory offers an opportunity for redemption.
Ouro negro (2024)
Takashi Sugimoto
Portugal
In a rural area of southern India, the powerful Hindu deity Balaji exerts a strong influence on Saraswathi. Like many women in her village, she combs the long dark hair of her young daughters in a daily ritual. The excess hair acquires monetary value when the Narikurava, a marginalized bird-hunting tribe, visit villages to collect it in exchange for household items. Black Gold is human hair. One day, Saraswathi decides to offer his precious long hair to the deity Balaji in a temple to fulfill a wish. Again, someone somewhere in the world benefits from her spiritual act.
Paradise (2024)
Ana Riper
Brazil
Documentary on the legacies of Brazil's colonial condition in today's everyday life. Based on a musical narrative and the use of archival material, the film proposes a restless journey through the relationships forged by the possession of land and people. The narration of texts about family life in colonial times is combined with the experiences of characters who comment on and update these relationships in the present. A popular symphony about violence, resistance, strength and affection.
Rune Simi (2025)
Augusto Zegarra Pineda-Arce
Peru
Fernando, a young activist and voice actor from Cusco, Peru, is trying to save his indigenous language from extinction. His dream: to convince The Walt Disney Company to allow him to dub The Lion King into Quechua, the language of the Incas. This journey will lead him to rethink his role as a father and activist, with his eight-year-old son as his essential companion in this adventure.
Afternoons of solitude (2024)
Albert Serra
Spain | France | Portugal
Portrait of Andrés Roca Rey, an active bullfighting star, which allows us to reflect on the intimate experience of the bullfighter who assumes the risk of facing the bull as a personal duty, out of respect for tradition and as an aesthetic challenge. This challenge creates an ephemeral beauty through the material and violent confrontation between human rationality and the brutality of the wild animal.
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