The excellent run of Catalan cinema at European festivals continues to expand after the Golden Bear awarded last year at the Berlinale to Carla Simón and her successful Alcarrà s. And it is that Creatura, the second feature film by the Barcelona actress and director Elena MartÃn Gimeno, presented at the Cannes Film Festival’s Fortnight, has won the Label Europa Cinemas award, the award for the best European film in this parallel section of the competition.
The news was announced at a ceremony on the Croisette beach organized by the partners and sponsors of the Fortnight in which MartÃn was not present because he had already left Cannes. Sources from his press team have assured La Vanguardia that he is “immensely happy” with the award.
MartÃn Gimeno, who made his directorial debut with Júlia Ist, already received a warm reception from the public after the official screening of the film last Saturday. Co-written with Clara Roquet, shot in Catalan and set in L’Escala, the film explores female sexuality, taboos and inhibitions through three different stages of the protagonist: childhood, adolescence and mature age.
The film “talks about a woman who tries to reconnect with pleasure and understand how her desire works and what are the external and internal effects that have been building the ideas she has preconceived in relation to her own body and sex,” said the director. in an interview with this newspaper.
One of the most complex issues that the story addresses is that of infantile sexuality. “We were fully aware that making this portrait was something very risky. To begin with, there are practically no cinematographic references. There are more focused on adolescence and with Clara we were watching them because it was important for us to feed on it.” Both MartÃn and Roquet were very clear that they did not want to raise the issue from the morbid. “The most radical thing was to be as honest and tender as possible, since history has a desire for reconciliation.”
The award jury has valued “an impressive and well-written portrait of a woman, and how she deals with her sexuality and intimacy, which reflects her experiences during her childhood and adolescence. There are challenging moments but also humor, and all filmed with beauty and dynamism”. MartÃn is accompanied in this story that will be released in theaters on September 8 by the actors Oriol Pla, Clara Segura and Alex Brendemühl.
