AL ESTE Film Festival | Bringing independent cinema closer

Al Este International Film Festival is an independent film festival that’s been around since 2009. Born in Nouveau, France, Al Este was brought to Peru to exhibit a different kind of cinema that’s not often shown in commercial venues. Its objective is to spread the cinematographic culture of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, allowing the strenghtening, integration and dialogue between these two parts of the world.

For the 15th edition of Al Este International Film Festival (2024), the communications team worked with a design agency to define the festival’s new brand. For this edition, the visuals would go with a typography-based ‘minimalistic’ style, opting for bold colors such as pink in association with this year’s concept: a ‘quinceañero’.

To invite the festival audience and attract new potential visitors, I was tasked with creating a short trailer that could be shown in cinemas and public spaces and adapted for various media platforms, including television and social media.

When I work on an editing project using archival footage—such as a trailer made from clips of other movie trailers—I start by creating a storyboard with ideas that could be useful for transitions or animations I want to include in the edit.

Usually, the sketches remain as sketches, and I often don’t end up using them.

For this trailer, I wanted to experiment with a technique I hadn’t tried before: incorporating volumetric elements into the edit. I decided to give the festival’s logo a three-dimensional look in Illustrator and then animate it on its axis in After Effects, allowing me to use it as an additional element throughout the trailer. This approach would add a modern touch to the trailer, making it more eye-catching for the audience and helping it stand out from the usual audiovisual content seen on Lima’s screens.

Before starting the editing process for a project like this, I choose a song. For the Al Este festival, given the type of films they showcase, I tend to select rhythmic tracks with a fast tempo, such as electronic, drum & bass, or something more experimental. Based on the rhythms, I pick segments that help build a narrative aligned with the year’s theme or that look eye-catching.

In this trailer, I incorporated numerous quick cuts to match the dynamic elements of the chosen track. Additionally, I opted for an aesthetic reminiscent of a glitch effect (though not quite full glitch), layering multiple overlapping images. That’s why my Premiere timeline looks like a series of small buildings with tiny cuts.

I delivered three versions of the trailer: a horizontal 16:9 format for cinema screenings, a vertical version adapted for social media, and a final 4:3 version for public spaces. The trailer published on social media was viewed by over 28,000 people, and the cinema version was shown in 15 different theaters.