The nineteenth edition of the Seville Festival has announced this afternoon a list of winners marked by the Golden Giraldillo for the best film to Saint Omer, the exciting debut in the feature film by the prestigious French documentary filmmaker Alice Diop who has already won the Grand Prize of the Jury and the best first film in the last edition of the Venice Film Festival. Inspired by the true case of a Senegalese woman who abandoned her 15-month-old baby on the seashore in France, the viewer witnesses her trial through the eyes of a young pregnant novelist who wants to write about the myth of Medea.
The play, co-written with Marie NDiaye and starring a splendid Guslagie Malanga, is a tense story about trials, as well as a psychological portrait and an uncomfortable reflection on human acts, motherhood and the cultural problems of those who migrate. The script, signed by Diop as well as NDiaye and Amrita David, has also been awarded as the most outstanding in the official section for "care in writing the characters and oral/verbal expression as a visible and profound manifestation of being human".
The drama about the friendship between two teenage boys narrated by the Belgian Lukas Dhont in Close has won the Grand Jury Prize ex aequo with Fogo-Fátuo, by Joao Pedro Rodrigues, who imagines a future Portugal where the monarchy has been restored. The jury highlighted Close's "elegant classicism in his staging, which creates a moving portrait of two remarkable characters."
The Italian Pietro Marcello, who in 2019 won the Golden Giraldillo for best film for Martin Eden, has been recognized as best director for Scarlet, a piece with hints of fable and wrapped in great beauty set in rural France in the early of the 20th century. The young interpreter of Close, Eden Dambrine, only 15 years old, has prevailed in the category of best actor and in the female section the jury has opted both for the newcomer Julie Ledru from Rodeo, in which she gives life to a conflictive girl passionate about motorcycles, as for the work of Zar Amir Ebrahimi in Holy Spider, for which she already won the award at the Cannes Film Festival in the role of a journalist who investigates the crimes of a serial killer of women.
The children of others, the film about motherhood directed by Rebecca Zlotowski that opened the competition on the 4th, has won the award for best editing for a job that "breathes new life into the script and gives the film its true rhythm and It gives it another dimension." The one for photography has gone to Mauro Herce for Matadero, by Santiago Fillol, a work recognized because "it allows the viewer to deeply feel the source of all light".
In the New Waves section, the best film was Aftersun, by Charlotte Wells, a moving story about the relationship between a father and his eleven-year-old daughter during their vacations at a resort in Turkey that drinks from the real experience of the Scottish director. The film, one of the revelations of the year, was awarded at Cannes Critics' Week and is competing so far for three Gotham Awards and 14 British Independent Film Awards (BIFA). In Non-Fiction the chosen one has been Viagem ao sol, by Ansgar Schaefer and Susana de Sousa Dias.
The New Waves special award went to A noiva, directed by Sergio Tréfaut. Dane Komlijen has triumphed with his Afterwater in the Permanent Revolutions section for best film and within Andalusian Panorama the winner is Como ardilla en el agua, by Mayte Gómez Molina and Mayte Molina Romero.
