Spanish cinema is in luck after it became known this past Tuesday, January 23, that two films from our industry had been nominated for the Oscars at the 96th edition of the Hollywood Awards. On the one hand, ‘The Snow Society’the feature film by the well-known Juan Antonio Bayona that addresses the air tragedy in the Andes of 1972, choose to take home no less than two statuettes: ‘Best Foreign Film’ and ‘Best Makeup and Hairstyling’; On the other hand, Pablo Berger will compete in ‘Best animated film’ with ‘Robot dreams’the unusual story of friendship between a robot and a dog.

“LET’S GO UP!!!”, expressed a euphoric Bayona on social networks shortly after the nominations were made public. A feeling that he delved into later, when he gave several interviews to different media outlets in the late hours of yesterday. “I am very happy that the film is reaching so much and the public has received it with so much affection,” said the film director in statements to ‘Telecinco’a chain in which he confessed that he was not expecting the Oscar nomination.

This has led him to be in a scenario of uncertainty: “Since this is the first time I’ve been nominated, I don’t know what the next steps are.. I imagine that continuing to show the film, talking about it, going to many showings and making it known.” Of course, he believes “you have to trust the film”, having already reflected on this idea: “You have to trust the message it provides and try to get as many academics as possible to see it so that they can later make the decision to, if they like it better, vote for it.” If there is one thing clear for Bayona, it is that “all the departments have done a sensational job.”

This was stated not on ‘Telecinco’, but on ‘Cadena SER’, a medium to which he also offered statements after the news of his nominations spread and in which he assured that both he and his team They are “a little overwhelmed” by the success and support received: “Normally when a film was released it went to the theaters with three times as many copies, but with this one it is still working and is still in the same theaters where it started, so it’s OK“. As indicated at the beginning, not only Bayona is close to reaching the cinematographic summit.

The director Pablo Berger was the other person named by everyone yesterday. Not in vain, ‘Robot Dreams’ has achieved an effect very similar to that of ‘The Snow Society’: you hear many people, if not everyone, talking about this film that is based on Sara’s graphic novel Man to give birth to a story as beautiful as it is dramatic; a story that has been very popular in Hollywood. “You should have seen us scream“, he warned on ‘Cadena SER’ when they asked him how he felt about this nomination.

While Berger attested to his joy, he acknowledged that due to the criticism received in the American press and the good reception at international festivals, he did not completely rule out his feature film having options at the Oscars: “We did have one or more tickets to be among the five nominees“The difficult thing, given what we have seen, will be to win: ‘Robot Dreams’ competes with the return of Miyazaki and his ‘The Boy and the Heron’, with the spectacular animation of ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ and with ‘Elemental’; that is, with Pixar.