It was sung. 20,000 species of bees, by Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, the tender story of Aitor, who at the age of eight realizes that she is a girl, has won the Biznaga de Oro at the Malaga Festival. The film, which has already screened at the Berlinale, narrates the reality of that girl who tries to find herself during a summer spent with her mother, her brothers, her grandmother and, above all, a beekeeper aunt.
The jury, chaired by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, announced the list of winners this morning at the Albéniz cinema in Malaga. A record in which the prizes have been as fair as distributed. The award for best director went to the Chilean Matías Bize for El punishment, a disturbing film that narrates the ordeal suffered by the parents of a boy who disappears in the woods.
In the Málaga contest, female performances have stood out. Everything was very close, but the actress María Vázquez, her favourite, has won the Biznaga de Plata for the best leading female performance for her role as a mother who struggles to raise her daughter in Matria, by Ávaro Gago .
And although there were other candidates with more than solvent jobs, no one will dispute that the award for best male lead performance went to Alberto Ammann for his performance in Upon Entry, by Alejandro Rojas and Juan Sebastián Vasquez. Ammann plays a Venezuelan architect who decides to settle in New York with his partner, a Barcelona artist played by Bruna Cusí. At customs they are detained and subjected to a humiliating interrogation that will make them ask many things.
Marina and Luna are two teenage sisters who travel from Chile to Panama to meet their father whom they haven’t seen since they were girls. Marina wants to be a pilot and needs the money from her missing parent to pay for the race. This is how Las hijas, by Kattia González, begins, a film full of color, music and youth that has won the Biznaga de Oro for best Ibero-American film, a category where everything was very close.
And the jury prize went to the entire cast of Bajo terapia, the film by Gerardo Herrero starring Malena Alterio, Alexandra Jiménez, Fele Martínez, Antonio Pagudo, Eva Ugarte and Juan Carlos Vellido. The film presents three couples who meet to participate in a group therapy in which things that remained hidden emerge.
