“Here in the cinema it is also over.” Ana Belén said it bluntly last night at the start of the 38th Goya Awards gala in Valladolid, which she presented alongside some Javis who initially appeared on stage in pajamas. “Women in cinema, like all of us, do not want attempts to live, and that means condemning all abuse and sexual violence, and deeply reviewing the structures,” Ana Belén continued. And after María Jiménez’s It’s Over sounded powerfully, the vice president of the Film Academy, Susi Sánchez, stated that “we reiterate our solidarity with all victims and we condemn abuses wherever they occur and from whomever they come from, we want spaces of respect and equality in our profession and in any area of ??society, the abuse of power and violence against women is over.”
A protest gala in many ways, also for peace in Gaza, and in which last night the great winner, the third film with the most Goya awards in history after Sea Inside and Ay, Carmela, was The Snow Society by J.A. Bayona, which took home the awards for best film, director, breakthrough actor (Matías Recalt), music, art direction, production direction, costumes, makeup, photography, special effects, sound and editing. A Bayona who vindicated himself against those who told him for so many years “that a film in Spanish could not be made with this level of ambition. Thanks to Netflix, it has 150 million viewers, even though there was no audience. And 450,000 in movie theaters.” Compared to The Snow Society, the other big favorite, 20,000 Species of Bees by Estibaliz Urresola and its exciting story of a trans childhood, won three awards: best new director, original screenplay and supporting actress (Ane Gabarain).
An evening that was not seen, as expected, with the expected supporters, who decided not to demonstrate, and which gave way to other demands that began with the paipay that many attendees wore on the red carpet with a visible
The demands of a night full of Catalan winners were also for peace in Gaza. Estibaliz Urresola collected the Goya saying that a “genocide” was happening, and Alba Flores presented an award with a “good night and peace for Palestine, please.” For his part, Equatorial Guinean actor Malcolm Treviño-Sitté called for “more racial diversity in Spanish cinema and without forgiveness.” And Rigoberta Bandini, who won the Goya for best original song for I only want love, from I am loving you madly, did not need to release the speech that, she assured, she had kept between her breasts, to dedicate it to all her friends in the group. LGTBI, “those who were called dykes or faggots in the schoolyard and who have had to hide their way of being to fit in.” Guillermo García, Goya for best fiction short film for Although it is at night, on the Cañada Real in Madrid, denounced that it is the “fourth winter without light for 4,000 people, girls and boys, a flagrant violation of human rights. Let’s assume our responsibility.” Mabel Lozano, best short documentary for Ava, recalled that “we say that slavery has disappeared from European society, but no, now it only applies to women and it is called prostitution.”
In a gala that awarded David Verdaguer as best actor (They Know That) and Malena Alterio (Que Nadie Duerma) as Actress, as Best Documentary to While You Are, the Here and Now by Carme Elías, by Claudia Pinto, about the fight against the Catalan actress’s Alzheimer’s, the best Ibero-American film was the exciting Chilean documentary La memoria infinite, by Maite Alberdi, which deals with the same disease and competes at the Oscars. As do Anatomy of a Fall (best European film last night) and Pablo Berger, who won the Goya for best animated film and best adapted script for Robot Dreams. At the ceremony, Concha Velasco was remembered, of whom Ana Belén and Los Javis performed La chica ye-yé and Mamá, Quiero ser artista.
Without a doubt, the queen of the night was Sigourney Weaver, international Goya, for whom the audience gave her a standing ovation. “When I was a child I was fascinated by maps, especially the old ones, in which there were monsters on the edge of the continents. Sometimes as a woman in this industry I have remembered those maps and their monsters. I’ve met some monsters and played some. Always looking for stories that remind us as women how powerful we are.” And she assured that “Bill Murray tells me that my performance is always much better dubbed into Spanish, and that is thanks to María Luisa Solá, who has dubbed me 30 times,” she assured.
The Goya of Honor went to another myth, to a 103-year-old Barcelonan who began working before the Civil War: Juan Mariné, living memory and protagonist of Spanish cinema, and also, of the impossible Spanish history of the 20th century, member of the fifth of the bottle at the age of 17, director of photography of 140 films and inventor of techniques to recover films that, as José Sacristán recalled last night, “has saved authentic jewels of our cinema from destruction and oblivion.”
