By Selva Senor, Teacher and Head of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, Department of Languages and Cultures.

For the past eight years, several professors from the Department of Languages and Cultures, from the Arabic, Spanish, FLE (French as a Foreign Language), Italian, English, and Russian sections, have collaborated on a transversal initiative that brings students together around a shared creative endeavor: a Film Festival organized within the department itself.

This initiative enables students not only to express their imagination in a critical and reflective way, but also to acquire and develop specific skills such as writing a screenplay, filming and editing a short film, and working collaboratively in a foreign language. The project calls for teamwork, technical know-how, attention to detail, and a strong sense of visual and narrative coherence – all essential elements in cinematic storytelling.

In this sense, the storytelling dimension of the project has broader implications beyond language learning. As Joseph L. Badaracco (Harvard Business School) argues, the multidimensional nature of great stories can help future leaders enhance self-understanding, emotional intelligence, and openness to alternative perspectives. Through cinematic storytelling, students are not only learning to communicate across cultures but also practicing the kind of reflective judgment and ethical awareness that are increasingly valued in business contexts. Real reflection, as Badaracco notes, is demanding – it requires time, attention, and training – yet it is precisely this capacity for deep reflection that distinguishes thoughtful leadership from mere technical competence*.

To carry out the project, three sessions are dedicated to its development. During the first session, students work on the idea inspired by the theme, and teachers, drawing from their own cultural references, propose short films (or film scenes) in the target language. These serve as a basis for analyzing both the form and content of the films. In other words, students work on cinematic structure, the characteristics of the protagonist, the antagonist, and the conflict that ties them together, as well as the different strategies directors use to convey emotions and make their films believable. In the second session, each student group writes the script and develops the atmosphere in which they want to set their short film, based on the chosen tone and music. Finally, in the third session, they focus on all aspects related to promoting their short film: the pitch, the poster, the synopsis, the tagline, and the logline. The following week, each group presents their short film to the rest of the class, and the class votes for the film that will represent them at the Film Festival which will be submitted to the jury.

Beyond the production of a short film, the methodology focuses on artistic creation as a driver of learning. The experience of conceiving a story, transforming it into a script, shaping it audio-visually, and finally sharing it with others allows students to take ownership of the foreign language in an authentic and motivating context. Creation places them in a situation of real language use: they must negotiate ideas, defend points of view, choose precise words, and explore cultural nuances. In this way, the project weaves together linguistic, narrative, and aesthetic competences, fostering a lively and meaningful learning experience in which critical reflection and artistic sensitivity become essential tools for understanding and communicating more effectively.

Each year, students are invited to produce a short film of no more than three minutes, responding to a selected theme. Last year’s theme was inspired by a line spoken by a character in Dostoevsky’s, The Idiot: “Beauty will save the world.”

The phrase sparked lively discussion among students. Some of the guiding questions that emerged in class included: What might save the world today? What are the most pressing problems we face? What role can each of us play? Should we try to save society as a whole, or could saving a single individual be enough for beauty to reveal itself in the world? From these reflections, each group developed its own cinematic response.

A jury composed of members of the Department of Languages and Cultures, the K-lab and the Learning Centre, selected three short films that stood out for their depth, originality, and thoughtful reinterpretation of the central idea.

The GBBA first prize went to the short film entitled When We Bloom, produced by students from the English course. For this group, the beauty that might save the world lies in small, everyday gestures that stem from the effort to see and understand others. In other words, in letting go of egocentric reactions and cultivating empathy. The group conveyed this message not only through narrative, but also through visual strategies involving color, framing, and action.

The Grande École first prize was awarded to a Spanish course group for their film Cena para cuatro (Dinner for Four). Here, beauty is not expressed through good deeds, but rather through beautiful, though often unspoken, emotions inspired by others. The film explores the courage it takes to express one’s feelings and the transformative power of reciprocity. As the student-actors explain through their characters, perceptions of beauty can vary: for one character, merely harboring loving feelings is uplifting and beautiful; for another, beauty lies in voicing and sharing those emotions.

The Special Jury Prize was awarded to another Spanish course group for their film Salvar al mundo (Saving the World). In this dystopian narrative, the government declares a twelve-hour national purge allowing citizens to forcibly redistribute works of art, under the pretense that everyone has a right to beauty – and thus, to art, which one character describes as “the material manifestation of the soul.” However, the story reveals how this policy, intended to promote equality, ultimately reproduces inequality due to the greed of certain individuals.

Three short films, three distinct interpretations of the idea that beauty can redeem the world. And yet, what unites them is their power to provoke thought, challenge perspectives, and invite us to reflect on how we see others – and ourselves. As Paul Ricoeur wrote: “Creative imagination can expand our visions of the world, or even create new ones: it can even change our way of being in the world.”**

These short films do not simply mirror reality – they reinterpret and transform it, opening pathways to meaning and offering us, in the end, a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world we inhabit.

* Badaracco, J. L. (2006). Questions of character: Illuminating the heart of leadership through literature. Harvard Business Review Press.
** Ricœur, P. (2024). L’Imagination: Cours à l’Université de Chicago (1975) (Jean-Luc Amalric, trad.). Seuil.