The Kino Otok – Isola Cinema Festival is a competitive festival launched in 2004 with special focus on films from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.  It offers the new experience of the moving pictures in all its magic, free and easygoing spirit and direct contact with the audience.

For its first edition 32 films of the official programme have been shown to 5000 visitors. The festival hosted 13 established film artists and many more important guests from around the globe, among them Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Thai director came to Izola only three days after winning the Prix du Jury in Cannes!

During the festival,  the picturesque ancient town center of Izola is reborn as a true cinema island. In the very heart of Izola, on the Manzioli square, a true open cinema, The Cinema Island, emerges as the festival's undoubted trademark. This is where all the inhabitants of the film colony spend their late May evenings and, together with the townspeople, enjoy the projections beneath the stary skies.

Official film programme of the festival consists of several sections, namely Harvest (competition programme of the festival, shown in the open air cinema on the Manzioli square), Masters (selection of the latest films by established masters of cinematography of "four continents"), Friends (film choices of the international programme committee members), Special Occasion (accompanying and complementary programme of the competition section) and New Shores (retrospectives of national or continental cinematographies, organized with cooperation of Slovenian Cinematheque.)