The 69th edition of SEMINCI brings together the most promising auteurs of the new American independent cinema and dedicates a retrospective to filmmaker Nathan Silver

• SEMINCI’s 69th edition features the films ‘Bob Trevino Likes It’, by Tracie Laymon; ‘Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point’, by Tyler Taormina; ‘Eephus’, by Carson Lund; ‘Blue Sun Palace’, by Constance Tsang; ‘A Real Pain’, by Jesse Eisemberg; and ‘Invention’, by Courtney Stephens.
• Nathan Silver’s latest work, ‘Between the Temples’, will have its Spanish premiere at the festival.

Following last year’s success with titles such as The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams) and the winner of the Meeting Point section, Gasoline Rainbow (Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross), the 69th Valladolid International Film Festival programme is strengthening its commitment to new American independent cinema, not only in its competitive sections but also through a retrospective that will take an in-depth look at the work of Nathan Silver, one of the most genuine American independent filmmakers on the current scene. . The retrospective is made up of five of his feature films, including the Spanish premiere of Between the Temples, his latest film.

The selected filmmakers competing in the 69th SEMINCI are, in the Official Selection, Tracie Laymon (Bob Trevino Likes It) and Tyler Taormina (Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point); in Meeting Point, Carson Lund (Eephus), Constance Tsang (Blue Sun Palace) and Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain), and in Alchemies, Courtney Stephens (Invention).

These artists represent the new generation of independent filmmakers, most of whom are making their first fiction films and, while retaining classic features of independent cinema – stories with a certain twilight feel featuring outsiders – they explore some of the most popular cinematic themes in American films – such as Christmas, baseball and buddy movies – with an uncomplicated gaze and a genuine vision far removed from clichés or taking screen codes to a different sphere. Far from being examples of the radical individualism that identify American society, these are highly collaborative projects in which the filmmakers participate in each other’s works.

Bob Trevino Likes It, starring John Leguizamo (Carlito’s Way , Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!) and Barbie Ferreira (Euphoria), tells the story of a lonely young woman, estranged from her narcissistic and manipulative father, who finds peace by establishing an emotional connection with a man who shares her father’s name and whom she meets on Facebook. Tracie Laymon received the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the South By Soutwest Film Festival in Austin (Texas, USA). The film is distributed in Spain by A Contracorriente Films.

Michael Cera (Juno, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Barbie), Elsie Fisher (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Ben Shenkman (The Trial of the Chicago 7), Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg star in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, Tyler Taormina’s second feature film, premiered at the Cannes Filmmakers’ Fortnight. Director of Happer’s Comet (2022) -presented in Time of History at the 67th SEMINCI- proposes a reinterpretation of a classic genre in American cinema, Christmas films, through the story of a family that brings together four generations to celebrate what could be the last Christmas in their family home in a small town in Long Island. Flamingo Films will be distributing the film in Spain.

Tyler Taormina is, along with Carson Lund, one of the founders of Omnes Films, a film collective that promotes ‘passionate and ambitious independent cinema, made by friends who prioritise atmosphere over plot and study the various forms of cultural decadence in the 21st century’. Carson Lund, cinematographer of the film Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, presents his debut feature, Eephus, with Tyler Taormina as producer, which is programmed at the Meeting Point section. Eephus, also premiered in Cannes, is a twilight film that connects with one of North America’s greatest icons, baseball, dealing with a beautiful story about time through the celebration of one last game between two amateur teams in a run-down New England stadium on the verge of being demolished. Starring Keith William Richards (Uncut Gems), Keith Poulson (The Great Pretender) and, in a nod to cinephilia, experimental film director Frederick Wiseman.

Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin at Meeting Point

Actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) presents his second film as director, A Real Pain, which stars alongside an extraordinary cast that includes Kieran Culkin (Sucession), Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing) and Will Sharpe (The White Lotus). With a screenplay that received an award at Sundance, A Real Pain is based on Eisenberg’s personal experience: two cousins whose grandmother fled Poland after the rise of the Nazis travel to Warsaw on a sightseeing tour for Jews or relatives of Holocaust victims. The film reflects on the trivialisation of the past and the memory of a place that has now become a crowded museum full of tourists. Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Spain is distributing the film.

Blue Sun Palace, recipient of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Critics’ Week, is Constance Tsang’s brilliant and promising debut feature, featuring an accidental love triangle marked by a tragic event, in which two best friends who live in New York’s Chinese community and work in the massage salon of the film’s title are separately involved in a relationship with the same married man. A beautiful reflection on absence, grief and the human need for connection, starring Taiwanese actor and director Lee Kang Sheng (The Wayward Cloud), a regular in Tsai Ming-Liang’s films. This film will be distributed in Spain by Atalante Cinema.

Invention, by Courtney Stephens, one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, is competing in Alchemies, featuring Callie Hernández (The Flight Attendant), winner of the Best Actress Award in the Filmmakers of the Present section at Locarno, as the main character and co-screenwriter. After the death of her father, an eccentric and conspiratorial quack, the protagonist inherits his patent for an experimental device that supposedly produces an electromagnetic cure.

Nathan Silver Retrospective

Considered a master of modernist melodrama, New York writer, producer and director Nathan Silver, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2005, his films are profound studies of the central characters, many of them on society’s margins, living through complex existential moments. Silver has written and produced five short films and nine feature films.

SEMINCI will be hosting the Spanish premiere of Between the Temples (2023), his latest film to date, which represents an evolutionary leap in his career. Starring Jason Schwartzman (Grand Budapest Hotel, Asteroid City), Carol Kane (The Sisters Brothers, The Princess Bride) and Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness, Ghostlight), in this comedy a synagogue cantor undergoes a profound crisis of faith when his primary schools music teacher returns to his life as a grown-up Bat Mitzvah student. Sony Pictures Spain is distributing the film.

The retrospectivewill showcase his films Soft in the Head (2013), a twist on romantic films with characters embroiled in great uncertainties; Uncertain Terms (2014), which takes place in a foster home for pregnant teenagers in the middle of the woods; Stinking Heaven (2015), set in a community for ex-addicts where its members confront their traumas while filming each other; and The Great Pretender (2018), where the line between fiction and reality blurs when a theatre director premieres a play based on her love story, which overlaps with the romance of the show’s two main characters.