It usually happens that film festivals already start with clear favorites for the awards. In the one in Malaga, it is almost taken for granted that the Galician María Vázquez will take the silver Biznaga for the best female performance for her role as Ramona, a humble woman who struggles to raise her daughter in Matria, by Álvaro Gago . Although there are also those who bet on Sofía Otero, a nine-year-old girl who stars in 20,000 species of bees, by Estibaliz Urresola. It is not a risky bet because the young Otero already won the acting award at the last Berlin Festival.
And yet, halfway through the Malaga contest, three Catalan actresses have begun to shine in a special way as their work has been screened. Laia Costa, Bruna Cusí and Greta Fernández can overshadow Vázquez and surprise next Saturday when the jury chaired by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón announces the list of winners. Costa, who has not been to Malaga because she is filming, has received applause from critics for her role as Irene in Els encantats, the new film by Elena Trapé.
Irene is a young woman who begins to get her life back on track after getting divorced. She has almost finished setting up her new apartment in Barcelona and has started dating a boy. But when she begins to apply the joint custody regime and is separated for the first time for a few days from her four-year-old daughter, Irene has a really hard time. Els encantats goes through those first moments of distance between mother and daughter. A few days that the protagonist spends in the house in the Pyrenees where she spent the summer as a child. Costa is in a great professional moment after having won the Goya for best leading actress for her role in Cinco Lobitos, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa.
Bruna Cusí has not won the Goya this year, but it cannot be ruled out that she will get it in the 2024 edition. The actress stars in no more and no less than three films in competition in the official section of the Malaga Festival this year. In Trugua (s), by Mario Hernández, she gives life to a prestigious actress who for a decade has had a clandestine relationship with a screenwriter played by Salva Reina. Despite maintaining other official relationships, the lovers meet each year precisely at the Malaga Festival, until the time comes for them to make decisions because she plans to get married and he plans to be her father.
In Upon Entry, by Alejandro Rojas and Juan Sebastián Vasquez, Cusí is the couple of Alberto Ammann. She is an artist from Barcelona and he is a Venezuelan architect who decide to move to New York, but entering the city will not be easy, because they are detained at customs and subjected to a humiliating interrogation that causes the woman to rethink many things. Cusí's third film in the competition is El fantastico caso del Golem, by Burnin' Barnacles, Nando Martínez and Juan González, a crazy science fiction comedy that also stars Luis Tosar and Anna Castillo in the cast.
Greta Fernández won the acting award at the 2019 San Sebastián Festival for La hija de un ladrón, by Belén Funes. Since then she has become one of the most valued actresses in Spanish cinema. Now, she competes in Málaga with Unicornios, by Àlex Lora, where she composes an unusual character, that of Isa, a slightly bitter and somewhat unpleasant girl who allows herself to be overcome by envy and selfishness, who suffers for not being the best and she leaves behind the people who really love her, her mother, her boyfriend or her close friend.
