The Seminci Women Filmmakers’ Forum will hold its second edition in 2025, dedicated to reflecting on activism, collaboration and the future of cinema made by women. This event, curated and moderated by cultural journalist Begoña Donat, offers a space for dialogue that focuses on the transformative power of audiovisual media and the ways in which female creators have contributed – and continue to contribute – to rethinking memory and opening up new forms of collective work and new professional and artistic paths.

Over the course of the day, the programme will take participants on a journey that begins with the recovery of silenced voices and political activism, moves on to explore emerging professions, and culminates in an examination of models of shared authorship, with the aim of imagining a fairer, more plural and inclusive future. In this second edition, we are also strengthening our collaboration with key institutions in Spanish cinema and have invited RTVE to help develop the content that will shape the event.

The first panel, entitled ‘Militant Cinema’, will focus on how contemporary female directors are rewriting narratives of the recent past to shed light on social struggles, experiences of exile, colonialism and war. Through their films, they recover female voices erased from the official historical narrative and transform cinema into a space for political and cultural intervention. Participants will include Judith Colell, who will present Frontera at Seminci, a historical thriller recounting the adventures of those who defied the rules to help Jews persecuted by the Nazis; Inés G. Aparicio,director of the short film La diva, mi abuela y yo, dedicated to the singer Lillian de Celis; Candela Sotos, director of Yrupé, which is competing in the Tiempo de Historia section; and Amparo Climent, who recently premiered the documentary Dolores Ibárruri. *Pasionaria*, about the former president of the Spanish Communist Party and one of the most iconic female figures of the 20th century.

The next presentation, ‘New Professions in the Audiovisual Sector’, developed in collaboration with RTVE, will provide a space for exploring emerging professions which, as they are not bound by traditional gender roles, help to build a more equitable industry from the ground up. The programme will cover disciplines such as music supervision, the analysis of audiovisual projects from a gender perspective, and accessibility coordination – areas in which it is possible to create diverse role models and transform production methods. Participants will include Judith A. Riera, a specialist in music supervision; Laura Feyto, head of the Accessibility Unit at TVE; and Beatriz Aparicio, head of the RTVE Equality Observatory.

Finally, the panel ‘Creative Collaborations’ will explore shared authorship as an alternative model to the myth of the individual genius. In recent years, female directors, producers, screenwriters and editors have demonstrated how trust and collaborative working enrich creative works and set an inspiring example for new generations. Within this framework, the discussion will feature the director Mar Coll and the screenwriter Valentina Viso, who competed at Seminci last year with the dramatic thriller Salve María, alongside the director Paula Ortiz, recognised at Seminci for her debut feature,

De tu ventana a la mía, which won the Pilar Miró Award for Best Debut Director in 2011, and producer María Zamora, winner of the 2024 National Film Award, following her collaboration on La virgen roja (2024) and a second feature film, currently in production.

Taken as a whole, this event invites us to look back critically to recover our collective memory, to the present to appreciate the strength of alliances, and to the future to forge paths that will make cinema a fairer, more inclusive and more cooperative space. The initiative stands as an ongoing narrative that affirms women filmmakers as essential agents of social and cultural change.