A Chilean documentary and three fiction features from Argentina, Mexico and Peru will compete for the Goya for best Ibero-American film at the 36th edition of the Spanish film awards that are being held this Saturday, February 12, in Valencia (eastern Spain) and in which the good bossstarring the Spanish Javier Bardem, is the great favorite.
An edition that began with controversy when the Film Academy announced that the representatives of the nominees for best Ibero-American film and best European film could not attend the gala in person to avoid risks due to COVID.
Faced with the protest of the affected films, the Academy backed down and the teams will be able to travel to Valencia to participate in the great festival of Spanish cinema, in which Latin American cinema will be present in its category and also at other moments of the gala.
On the one hand, The young Colombian Nicolle García could collect a Goya for being nominated for Best New Actress for her role in “Libertad”, by Clara Roqueta story about a teenage girl’s relationship with the daughter of the family’s Latin American maid.
And among the presenters there will also be a Latin accent, since on stage there will be the Colombian Juana Acosta or the Argentines by birth and Spaniards by adoption Bárbara Lennie and Juan Diego Botto.
On the contrary, Spaniards on the other side of the Atlantic are considered as compatriots. This is the case of Joaquín Sabina, one of the main performances of the gala, or Antonio Banderas, who last year hosted an online gala and who this time will participate in the face-to-face return of the awards.
Or José Sacristán, who will receive the Goya de Honor for an exceptional career that led him to live and work in Argentina for several years.
But the main Latin presence will be, like every year, in the category of best Ibero-American film, which in this edition has four very different candidates, an example of the heterogeneity of Hispanic cinema.
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There is the poetic documentary “The Mountain Range of Dreams”, by Chilean Patricio Guzmán, which with this work closes a trilogy that began with “Nostalgia for the light” (2010) and continued with “The mother-of-pearl button” (2015). The first framed in the northern Atacama desert; the second in the ocean and the nature of southern Chile and the third in the Andes, scenarios that accompany a profound political analysis of recent Chilean history.
If it wins the Goya, it would be the first time that a documentary triumphs in this category of awards and it would also mean the fifth award for Chilean cinema.
From Mexico comes “The Wolves”, a delicate film that narrates the drama of immigration from a child’s perspective, with much of the autobiography of the director Samuel Kishi, who has wanted to pay tribute to his mother and the trip they made to the United States.
The second feature film by this Guadalajara native is the twentieth nomination for Mexico, which has won three Goyas so far, the last one for “Roma”, by Alfonso Cuarón, in 2019.
The Argentine Paula Hernández competes with “The Siamese”, a small and independent film, very far from the great productions of this country that usually work very well in the Goya. The last to take it away was Sebastián Borensztein, for “The Odyssey of the Giles”, in 2020.
The complex relationship between a mother and her daughter is at the center of this film that raises Argentina’s nominations to 28, with 18 Goya Awards, the most recognized Ibero-American country in Spanish film awards.
The nominees are completed by the Peruvian “Canción sin nombre”, Melina León’s first film, a portrait of scourges such as indigenous helplessness, poverty or machismo, based on real events, which tells the story of Georgina, a young woman from Ayacucho whose baby disappears in the hospital where she gave birth.
A film that also travels through the terrorism of Sendero Luminoso -the action takes place in the mid-eighties-, and which is the ninth film from Peru that competes for a Goya that it has only won once, in 1992, for “Caídos del Heaven” by Francisco Lombardi.
If there are no last-minute problems, Melina León and Patricio Guzmán will be at the gala, while the teams will be present for the films from Mexico and Argentina. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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