Havana, Cuba.- With the screening of short film ”Diario” (Diary), of young movie maker Juan Carlos Alom, the 18th Youth Film Festival opens on Tuesday in Havana.

The more-than-14-minute film, produced in 2009, officially opens the event, in which nearly 50 national and foreign films grouped in Fiction and Documentary categories will be shown.

Foreign directors’ films awarded by the Clermont-Ferrand film festivals and the Annecy International Short Film, also by a short film event in Spain, among others, will be screened.

The exhibit, whose objective is to show the course taken by audiovisual production in Cuba nowadays, hosts 11 fiction films and 13 documentaries in competition, and premieres this year a prize for animation films.

The program of the event also includes keynote speeches, workshops, exhibitions, special performances and the usual sections ‘Bonus’, ‘La Mirada del otro’, ‘Moviendo ideas’, and ‘the Poster Contest Prize’.

The Charles Chaplin and 23 y 12 movie theaters, and the Fresa y Chocolate Cultural Center, will screen the films in competition, along with the international cycles.