Benalmadena Film Festival FICCAB Marks 25 Years Benalmádena's international film festival FICCAB celebrates its 25th edition with a tribute to Leo Harlem, an homage to Paul Lukas and a week of screenings to October 17. A Quarter-Century of Cinema in Arroyo de la Miel Twenty-five years is a serious run for any festival, and Benalmádena's international film week has reached that milestone with its programme intact. The 25th edition of FICCAB, the Festival Internacional de Cine de Benalmádena, runs from October 10 to 17 at the Casa de la Cultura in Arroyo de la Miel, on the Plaza de Austria. The anniversary programme mixes red-carpet premieres with a deliberately unpolished look back at where the festival came from. The Casa de la Cultura has hosted FICCAB for most of its life, and the building itself tells part of the story. It is a municipal venue rather than a glamour spot, the kind of place that runs adult education classes and local theatre groups for most of the year before the festival takes it over each October. That ordinariness is part of the appeal. Benalmádena's film week has never tried to dress itself up as something it isn't, and after 25 years that honesty has become the brand. Honouring Leo Harlem and Paul Lukas A quarter of a century of anything tends to produce some ceremony, and FICCAB has handled it with humour rather than pomp. This year's main tribute goes to Leo Harlem, the Spanish stand-up and screen comedian whose career has crossed generations, moving from late-night television to arenas and back to the small rooms where his jokes land hardest. A festival audience in a municipal theatre is precisely the crowd he was built for, and the tribute is shaping up to be one of the loudest nights of the week. The programme also reaches further into the past. One of the homages this year goes to Paul Lukas, the Hungarian-born actor who left interwar Europe for classic Hollywood and won the Academy Award for best actor for Watch on the Rhine in 1943. A century on from his first screen roles, a Costa del Sol festival choosing to mark his career says something about where FICCAB believes cinema history actually sits — not only in the obvious capitals, but in the towns that still bother to remember. The Competition and the Jury The competitive side of the week keeps its familiar shape. A jury that includes academics from the University of Málaga's audiovisual communication department will judge the official selection, lending the festival an academic credibility that smaller coastal events often lack. Screenings run daily at the Casa de la Cultura through to the closing gala on October 17, with films arriving from across Latin America and Europe rather than sticking to the usual festival-circuit suspects. For a festival of this size, the choice of venue matters more than it might seem. Arroyo de la Miel is Benalmádena's most local neighbourhood, distinct from the resort strip along the seafront, and FICCAB has always played to the town rather than to the tourist trade. That instinct is probably why it has survived when so many seasonal events along this coast have not. What It Means for Residents and Visitors Benalmádena is one of the most international towns on the Costa del Sol, home to a large foreign community living alongside a Spanish population that has watched the place change considerably over the decades. FICCAB belongs to both audiences equally. The town turns out for it much as it turns out for its annual feria — enthusiastically, and without much fuss about dress codes or formality. For anyone planning their week around it, the practical details are straightforward. Screenings at the Casa de la Cultura continue through October 17, when the closing gala brings proceedings to an end. Tickets for the tribute evenings, particularly the Leo Harlem night, are worth chasing early. Twenty-five years of local goodwill tends to fill a room quickly, and latecomers are likely to be disappointed. A Festival That Simply Refused to Fade A festival does not reach its silver edition by accident. Somebody kept it going through the lean years, found the venues when funding was uncertain, kept the juries honest, and put the posters up every October without fail. Benalmádena has plenty of seasonal events that flare brightly for a year or two and then quietly disappear. FICCAB stuck around. The 25th edition is running now, and the town has every reason to treat that as something worth marking properly.