Who will take the Golden Spike? The Valladolid Film Festival faces its final stretch after a marathon edition. The official section has had a total of 23 feature films. These are the films that have already screened at Seminci and that you can't miss:
Antonio Benaiges was a teacher from a small town in Tarragona. In 1934, he got a job teaching the children of Bañuelos de Bureba, another tiny town, in this case in the province of Burgos. The professor arrived at his new destination loaded with innovative ideas, a desire to transmit knowledge, and to enjoy educating. He soon made a place for himself in the hearts of the students with his portable printing press, which he used to edit the children's essays and stories. Benaiges wanted to take the whole class to his native Tarragona to show them the sea...
Based on a novel by Francesc Escribano, which also reflects real events, The Master Who Promised the Sea, is emerging as one of the essential titles of the next season. Pay attention to the interpretation of Enric Auquer, who has become Benaiges. The film is directed by Patricia Font and also has Laia Costa and Luisa Gavasa in the cast. The teacher who promised the sea participates in the official section of the Seminci out of competition.
Also out of competition, the Valladolid Festival opened with La contara de films, an international production that has a luxury cast headed by Bérénice Bejo, Antonio de la Torre and Daniel Brühl. The film, based on a novel by Hernán Rivera Letelier, was filmed in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where the director, Lone Scherfig, recreates life in the saltpeter mines in the 1960s.
In this environment, the cinema is the last refuge for the miners. When little María Margarita's family is left without income, that escape disappears. There is no money for tickets. But the girl will go see Spartacus, From Here to Eternity, Paths of Glory, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Belinda and many other movies in the living room of her small town and then explain them to her family and later to the entire family. city.
Andrea is a 15-year-old teenager from Cádiz who lives with her mother and her two little brothers, Tomás and Fidel. The girl takes care of taking the children to school, picking them up, doing their homework with them, giving them dinner and putting them to bed. Her mother works late. He doesn't know anything about her father. The man left them a long time ago. She now lives with another family and, although a visitation regime was agreed upon during the separation, he never goes to see her children.
The girl demands her father to come see her. But perhaps the solution to that conflict is not in the courts. What Andrea's love suggests "is that it is not worth demanding the affection of someone who does not want to give it to you and also that the true family is among the people who truly love you beyond the biological," says Manuel Martín. Cuenca, the director of this emotional film that could aspire to one of the awards that will be awarded on Saturday.
A flight from Türkiye to Belarus. The passage is made up of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other Arab countries. Alexander Lukashenko's regime has promised them that they will be able to enter Europe through their country. But when immigrants arrive at the border with Poland they only find hostility, hunger, thirst, difficulties and immediate deportations.
The Polish Government does not want to welcome more foreigners. He alleges that they will be “the future terrorists who plant bombs in the Warsaw subway” and trains his border guards to force the refugees to return to Belarusian territory. Despite everything, there is some hope, because a group of volunteers made up of doctors, psychologists and young activists care for people trapped on the terrible green border, even risking being detained by the Polish police. Agnieszka Holland delves into the refugee crisis in Green Border, one of the films of the year, which has already screened in Venice and is one of the best, despite its harshness, that has been screened at the Seminci.
The British Molly Manning Walker makes her debut as a director with a film that gives a lot to think about about the failure of sexual education for young people and that is also a journey not exempt from criticism about summer resorts for teenagers that only offer alcohol, drugs and sex. In How to have sex, three English girls, minors, go on vacation to an undetermined place that could be Magaluf, Lloret de Mar, Benidorm or some Greek island.
One of them is very worried because she is still a virgin. The girls make friends with the boys from the apartment next door and the protagonist thinks that she can have her first sexual relationship with one of them, but her vacation days are spent sleeping and her nights are spent drinking until she vomits, so nothing goes as planned. .
Patricia Ortega grew up without a father. Her mother spent her life working and never had a partner. One day Patricia found a naked photo of her mother and that was "quite a discovery" because the director had never imagined that her mother had a sexual side. This is how the idea of making a film about the sexuality of women in the elderly was born. Ortega wrote the script, but she quickly knew that she would not find enough financing in her native Venezuela.
Mamacruz thus became a Spanish project with the great Kiti Mánver as the protagonist. Mánver is Cruz, a Sevillian dressmaker who lives with her husband and her granddaughter. One day, by pure chance, she enters a porn website and that awakens her sexual desire. Cruz joins some classes on self-knowledge with other ladies and this allows her to open new doors and also make friends. Mamacruz is a fun and delicate film that participated in the Seminci out of competition and was already selected in Sudance.
Lucía's day-to-day life runs between her job as an IT specialist under the orders of a despotic boss and taking care of her elderly father. When her company goes bankrupt, the girl sees the opportunity to start a new life. She becomes a taxi driver, falls in love with her neighbor and has a friend, the first client to get into her taxi. Things seem to be going well, but...
Antonio Méndez Esparza has brought to the cinema Let Nobody Sleep, the disturbing novel by Juan José Millás, with Malena Alterio in the role of the optimistic Lucía; Rodrigo Poisón, as her attractive neighbor, and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, in the role of a brand new friend who knows how to listen. The film has been liked by the Seminci and Alterio is emerging as one of the candidates to win the award for best female performance.
One of Alterio's main rivals to win the best actress award is the German Leonie Benesch for her role in Ilker Çatak's Teacher's Room, the film that represents Germany at the Oscars. Benesch is a primary school teacher dedicated to her work and always concerned about her students. At the school where she works there have been some thefts that worry the teaching staff.
The young teacher decides to do some research on her own. It seems like they will be a trifle, but that decision will turn the life of the teacher, one of her students, and some of the people around her into hell. Teacher's Room is a disturbing thriller, which increases decibels throughout the film until reaching a shocking ending.
Lois Patiño says that with Samsara she wanted to experiment to take the viewer to new places and sensations that until now cinema did not offer. The film begins in Laos around a Buddhist temple. What seems like a mere documentary of manners gradually delves into a story of death and resurrection told through the beauty of the place.
Suddenly, Patiño invites the audience to close their eyes and not open them until there is silence. It is worth following these instructions to enjoy a new and sensory cinema that will take the viewer to another equally beautiful place.
