Cinéville Festival - Alejandro Amaro | Product & Visual Designer

The Brief

Cinéville runs an annual festival celebrating independent and international cinema. The brief asked for a poster that felt eclectic yet accessible, chic but relaxed, welcoming to spectators "from every horizon." The one hard constraint: build the whole concept on the visual language of Surrealism, 1920s–1930s.

The Mission

Create a poster that captures the festival's unique spirit using the cultural and visual references of Surrealism. A festival poster usually sells a schedule. This one had to sell a feeling: the exact moment the lights go down and a room full of strangers quietly agrees to believe in something impossible for two hours.

My job was to translate a hundred-year-old art movement into a poster that still reads as a contemporary festival, not a museum reprint.

The Codes of Surrealism

Before designing anything, I anchored the brief in the actual visual vocabulary of the movement:

Dreamlike imagery: representations of dream elements and subconscious states.
Metamorphosis: transformations and changes of form.
Automatism: creating art without conscious control.
Juxtaposition: placing objects and elements in unexpected contexts.
Symbolism: using symbols to represent deep ideas and emotions.

Moodboard

The references that grounded the direction before a single sketch: the paintings the brief was asking me to borrow a language from, plus the type references that would keep the result feeling like cinema, not a gallery wall.

La Persistance de la mémoire by Salvador Dalí, melting clocks draped over a desert landscape — Salvador Dalí — *La Persistance de la mémoire*.

Les idées claires by René Magritte, a stone floating beneath a cloud above the sea — René Magritte — *Les idées claires*.

A display type specimen, reference for the arched, marquee-style lettering.

Reference books on Surrealism and on typographic choice, stacked on a desk — A Surrealism reference book and a type guide, permanently open on my desk.

Typography & Color

The display font behind the arched "CinéVille" wordmark above brings originality and a chic touch through its distinctive serifs. Everything else — dates, baseline, fine print — runs on a clean, modern sans that stays out of the way and keeps the poster legible.

The palette pairs deep midnight navy with vibrant violet and warm gold, plus a soft cloud white: mystery and nighttime elegance, built for a festival, not a funeral.

1

#343A40

Elegance and modernity.

2

#7952B3

Mysticism and wisdom.

3

#FFC107

Energy and youth.

4

#E0E0E0

Clarity and balance.

From Sketch to Screen

Ten thumbnail layouts, one bowler-hat-with-a-film-reel-for-a-head figure that didn't make the cut, and a single pencil drawing that basically predicted the final poster. This is usually the part that never makes it into a portfolio, so here it is, unfiltered.

Ten thumbnail layout sketches exploring where the title, baseline, date and central artwork could sit on the poster — Layout thumbnails, mostly testing where the arch and the artwork should sit.

Eight rougher sketches, including a figure with a film reel for a head wearing a bowler hat, and early clapperboard and film-strip motifs — Rougher exploration, including a bowler-hat figure with a reel for a head. It got cut, but it's how "the reel is the main character" became the rule.

A more finished pencil sketch of the Cinéville poster, already showing the melting reel, clouds and theater seats silhouette facing an audience — The sketch where it clicked: reel, clouds, seats, audience. The whole final composition, still in pencil.

An abandoned draft poster built around a wishbone-and-cloth motif — Two digital directions. One was dropped within a day; the other became the poster.

The draft poster with the reel floating over theater seats under a starry sky, the direction that was kept — Two digital directions. One was dropped within a day; the other became the poster.

The Poster

Everything above exists to earn this image: a film reel losing its shape over a cloud, floating above an audience that hasn't arrived yet. Built to scale from a bus shelter to a city billboard, and to stay legible either way.

Final Cinéville festival poster, surrealist film reel melting over theater seats in a cloudy sky

The References

Two surrealist tropes, remixed into one image that tells the story of watching a film:

The melting film reel illustration created for the Cinéville poster, inspired by Dalí's soft clocks

The Melting Reel

A direct nod to Dalí's The Persistence of Memory. On the poster, it stands for the audacity of international cinema: its ability to question how we normally perceive time and reality.

The Dreamscape

Magritte's clouds chase something intangible: dreams placed where you don't expect them, standing in for the ephemeral and the mysterious. On the poster, the cloud represents imagination and creativity.

The floating cloud illustration created for the Cinéville poster

Urban Application

The poster was designed to be scalable, maintaining its impact whether on a small bus shelter or a large city billboard.