The Catalan Laura Ferrés has won the Golden Spike at the Valladolid Festival thanks to La imatge permanet, her first feature film, a women’s film that navigates between documentary and fiction. The film, which has already screened at the Locarno Festival, will hit theaters on November 17.
“We have chosen this film that is imbued with captivating themes, that is often deeply reflective, lyrical, and that remarkably captures the very essence of humanity,” said the jury of the 68th edition of the Seminci, chaired by the director as well. Catalan Meritxell Colell.
The award, not without controversy, having excluded titles such as Green border, by Agnieszka Holland; The love of Andrea, by Manuel Martín Cuenca, or That nobody sleeps, by Antonio Méndez Esparza, has had a marked feminine accent. To begin with, Ferrés is the first Spanish director to win a Golden Spike. In addition, the Silver Spike has gone to another woman, the Italian Alice Rohrwacher for La chimera, a film that delves into deep Italy in the 80s.
The award for best new direction went to the Englishwoman Molly Manning Walker for How to have sex, which narrates the vacation of three teenagers on a Mediterranean beach where they immerse themselves in a continuous party of alcohol, drugs and sex.
Léa Seydoux and Malena Alterio were the favorites to win the best actress award. In the end, it was the Frenchwoman who received recognition for her role, or rather, her role, in The Beast, by Bertrand Bonello. Seydoux plays several women who at different times in history – Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, Los Angeles in 2014 and again in Paris, but in 2040 – fall in love with the same man.
Dave Turne plays a pub owner in a working-class Durham neighborhood who tries to do the right thing when a group of Syrian refugees arrive in town in The Old Oak, Ken Loach’s latest film. The jury recognized Turne as best actor.
And another director, Angela Schanelec, won the award for best direction for Music, a risky film that attempts to reinterpret the myth of Oedipus and which already won the award for best script at the last Berlin Festival. The film has also won the award for best cinematography for Ivan Markovic in this intense Seminci, which closes its doors today and which marked the debut of José Luis Cienfuegos at the head of the festival, replacing Javier Angulo.
The hand of the new director has been noticed in the programming, which has included bolder titles than in previous editions. “This Seminci can be defined as intense and powerful: it has not been a year of transition at all,” said Cienfuegos before the jury announced the winners.
