More than 7,500 spectators attended the screenings of the first edition of the 4 +1 Festival in the five cities where it simultaneously took place: Bogotá (Cinemateca Distrital de Bogotá and Sala Chile –Cine Colombia), Buenos Aires (MALBA-Fundación Costantini), México City (Cineteca Nacional de México), Madrid (Cine Palafox) and São Paulo (Cinemateca Brasileira).
The veteran filmmaker Agnès Varda, winner of the 4 +1 Audience Award for Best Film with Les Plages d'Agnès (France, 2008), stressed that for her “the most prized award is the public’s response, the understanding of people towards my films, giving her the strength to continue to work” at the age of eighty-two. In the five countries involved, the audience has given a total average of 9.1 points over 10 to the winning film. The second film with the most votes has been Korean Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim, 2008) and the third, the Bulgarian-Swiss co production Eastern Plays (Kalem Kalev, 2009).
Also, the Guest of Honor of this first edition of the 4 +1 Festival, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul- Golden Palm winner at Cannes Festival- has publicly expressed his enthusiasm for an event that, in his words, "shows that film has no boundaries and projects me to the future." Pablo Jiménez Burillo, General Director of the Cultural Institute of the MAPFRE FOUNDATION has been especially pleased with the obtained success and the response from viewers to this ambitious film initiative. "We believe our new “festival of festivals” model is truly innovative and we are especially proud to help promote quality films and movies which until now remained invisible to the general public”.