Estranhos Encontros
The site for a film festival
Gabriel Souza- Category
- Cultural website
- Period
- 2026
- Technology
- Next.js · React · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · Canvas API · PostgreSQL / Neon
Estranhos Encontros is an international film festival in São Paulo. The site has to do two things at once: carry the festival's identity and answer the boring question. Where is it, what time, is there still time.
The first part needs room, and gets it on desktop. The second happens on a phone, on the way to the cinema. The content is in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French.
Stack and implementation
The editorial content lives in Markdown files, with pages in four languages. Canvas generates the story posters in the browser. The interest list is stored in PostgreSQL on Neon; images have versions prepared ahead of publishing for different screen sizes.
An identity that fills the screen
The opening is almost empty: letters scattered across the screen and a geometric symbol in motion. Exploring the symbol is the navigation: each area reveals a path into the content. Black and yellow carry on from there.
A programme to discover by looking
On desktop the posters appear together, like a cinema wall. Black gives the images room; yellow and the dotted typography stitch the identity across the programmes. Almost nobody arrives at a programme knowing what they want to see, and here you can choose by the poster.
From interest in a film to the next screening
Each film has images, a synopsis, credits and direction. Times and screens stay on the same page, so the interest doesn't have to survive a second search to become a trip to the festival.
A film becomes a poster to share
Inside each film, the generator builds a vertical poster with the image, title and screening details. There are three visual routes to choose, save and post to stories: Editorial, Colour field and Still. The festival identity travels with the recommendation of whoever watched it, or wants to.
The festival in your hand
On the phone the identity stays, but the navigation drops within reach of your thumb. The path is the same: opening, programmes, film, screenings. And it ends where the person was already heading anyway: their stories.