The Royal Artillery Factory, a building declared a Site of Cultural Interest, will become the stage tomorrow for the start of the 20th Seville European Film Festival (SEFF), a “special” and reduced edition that will last until the 29th. November and in which up to 88 films will be broadcast, 22 of them in a non-competitive Official Section, without competition and without awards. There will be 21 shorts, with four world premieres and the titles will be doubled in Panorama Andaluz, with 18 feature films and twenty shorts.
Although the celebration of this event has not been without controversy after a first postponement announcement in August by the Seville City Council, both the municipal government and the entire audiovisual sector have made it possible for this Festival to continue consolidating and positioning itself in the end. the agenda of film lovers and creators.
It will be at the opening gala when tribute will be paid with separate Golden Giraldillos to the careers of the French director Catherine Breillat, for breaking taboos from a feminine point of view and, posthumously, to the journalist Juan Antonio Bermúdez, programmer of the section Andalusian Panorama at the SEFF. The master of ceremonies of this event, which will be attended by 400 guests from the national and international film and cultural sector, will be Concha Ortiz, and among her notable attendees will be the vice president of the European Film Academy (EFA), Antonio Saura, responsible of one of the speeches with which the event will open.
From there, the lights will be turned off and the cinemas will be put into operation in two locations: MK2 CineSur Nervión Plaza and Cine Cervantes, the latter opening its doors again after months of renovations on the 150th anniversary of its birth.
It has been the general coordinator of the Festival, Manuel Cristóbal, who has indicated that, despite the difficulties that have existed in this edition, the event will be up to the task. In fact, as he pointed out, in the official section (with the same number of films as last year) there will be a tour “of the best European cinematography and the films that have had a more relevant career at festivals such as Cannes or Venice ”, a selection in which cinema from 15 countries is represented. The difference is that there will only be one world premiere: Felipe, a Spanish-Argentine production by Argentine director and screenwriter Federico Schmukler.
The Official Section of the SEFF is swelled by names in capital letters from European cinema, such as Michel Gondry, who presents the comedy The Book of Solutions, Wim Wenders, author of the documentary Anselm, Catherine Breillat, who in Last Summer tackles the remake of the drama Danish Queen of Hearts (May el-Toukhy, 2020), and Matteo Garrone's migration drama, I, Captain, the contemporary odyssey of two young Senegalese men through the dangers of the desert, the sea and detention centers in Libya. The film, awarded the Silver Lion for best direction at the Venice Film Festival, is Italy's candidate for the Oscars.
The Vietnamese Trần Anh Hùng was also awarded the award for best director, but in the last edition of Cannes for Slow Fire, selected for the Oscars by France. Like Danish Nikolaj Arcel's historical drama The Promised Land, his country's representative for the Academy Awards.
Before their screening in Seville, the films by Léa Fehner, Timm Kröger and Selman Nacar also had their debut at international festivals. The Frenchwoman competed in Panorama at the Berlinale with her medical drama Matronas; and the German and the Turkish participated in the Venice Film Festival, with respective thrillers. The first, The Theory of Everything, classically inspired, about the multiverse, and the second, Hesitation Wound, judicial.
They are accompanied by other illustrious filmmakers from the festival circuit, such as the Argentine Lisandro Alonso, who delves into genres never before seen in his filmography such as the western and the police drama in Eureka; the German Angela Schanelec, awarded the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay, for her revisiting of the myth of Oedipus in Music; the Belgian Joaquim Lafosse, subscribed to the uncomfortable look, this time with a drama about pedophilia within the family, A silence; and the Austrian Jessica Hausner, who proposes a dystopian satire on food and its restriction in Club Zero. His compatriot Patric Chiha coincides with the Frenchman Bertrand Bonello in adapting The Beast in the Jungle, by Henry James. The first, in La bête dans la jungle, with a colorful and musical vision filtered through different moments in a nightclub over 25 years; the second, with La bête, focusing on contemporary ethical and philosophical conflicts punctuated through various historical times. The programming is completed with several premieres. Federico Schmukler's feature film debut, Felipe, will be worldwide.
The one from the Andalusian production Animal/Humano, by Italian filmmaker Alessandro Pugno, where different stages of the life of a boy who wants to be a bullfighter and a tame bull are narrated, will be European. While the debut works of the Moroccan Kamal Lazraq, The Packs, Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the past Cannes Festival, and the Belgian Veerle Baetensla, Het Smelt, will have their debuts in Spain in Seville.
The Spaniards Víctor Iriarte and Javier Macipe will also visit the SEFF with their first films. The one from Bilbao, after winning the award for best direction at the Cinespaña Festival in Toulouse with Above all at night, and the one from Zaragoza with his very personal biopic about the musician Mauricio Aznar, La Estrella Azul. In his portrait of the leader of the rock group Más Birras, Macipe has relied on a large Andalusian team, the result of his training scholarship at the Antonio Gala Foundation.
In the same way that Pablo Berger has had Sevillian José Luis Agreda as art director for his debut in animation, Robot Dreams. This love letter to New York starring a dog and an android has been recognized with the Contracampo Prize at the Annecy Festival and will compete at the European Film Awards.
The Andalusian Panorama section remains one of the fundamental axes of the festival's programming. A meeting place for cinema made in the region where works that offer a clear image of its vitality and diversity are reviewed. The 2023 harvest includes examples of international and state co-productions, auteur films, documentaries on the history of Andalusia and others of a more creative nature.
Among the most relevant titles this year are Sueños y pan, an update of quinqui cinema passed through the sieve of the nouvelle vague by the Baena filmmaker Luis (Soto) Muñoz; and the Bulgarian co-production Liuben, in which Venci Kostov accompanies the anguished return of a Bulgarian migrant to his country due to the death of his grandfather.
The SEFF will support the documentary debut of journalist Javi Barón, who creates in Feudo a vibrant portrait of the Malaga town of Villanueva de Cauche through the vital desires and aspirations of its neighbors. Completing the films assigned to the documentary genre are Caleta Palace, where José Antonio Hergueta recounts, through fictional testimonies and archive resources, the taking of the city of Malaga by Franco's troops; La Singla, by Paloma Zapata, who participated in Hot Docs Toronto, about the young dancer who revolutionized the world of flamenco; Hannibal. The architect of Seville, by Paco Ortiz, about the architect of the Plaza de España in the Seville capital and precursor of the regionalist architectural style; La gazela del strait, where José Luis Tirado reviews the career of the Tarifa Choir on its fiftieth anniversary; Jesus Christ Flamenco, by Francisco Javier Gutiérrez, starring the greatest figures in the world of current flamenco singing and dancing; and Sowing dreams, with which Alfonso Sánchez brings us closer to the life and work of the brothers Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero in a fundamental viewing to understand the Spanish literary culture of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
Andalusian Panorama also incorporates two genre proposals, the rural thriller with horror elements The Wait, by F. Javier Gutiérrez, and Una noche con Adela, where Hugo Ruiz stood out in the Midnight section of the last Tribeca Festival with the detail of a revenge brutal. The anthology of feature films will also feature the screening of Amanece, by Juan Francisco Viruega, which was part of the San Sebastián Festival, Mamacruz, by Patricia Ortega, present at Sundance, Riqueni, by Paco Bech, Break Nation, by David Pareja, Las beasts of rosemary, by Manuel Correa, and Nana, by Castro Lorenzo.
The 'New Waves' or EFA sections will be shorter.
