Actress Charo López will receive the Valladolid Festival’s Honorary Spike

• The Salamanca-born actress will be protagonist at the Castile and León Film Gala, also featuring the premiere of the documentary feature  Anatomía de un dandy, dedicated to Spanish writer Francisco Umbral

Actress Charo López (Salamanca, 1943) will receive the Honorary Spike of  the 65 Valladolid International Film Week during the Castille and  León Film Gala in recognition of her long and prestigious acting career, in which she has played more than one hundred film, stage  and television roles.

The performer  will receive the honorary award on October 26 at Teatro Zorrilla in the finale of the day Seminci dedicates to Castile and Leon’s film and audiovisual sector.  The award’s presentation will take place during the Castile and León Film Gala, which will additionally  host the premiere of the documentary Anatomía de un dandy, a film  co-directed by  Charlie Arnaiz and Alberto Ortega which draws a portrait of the journalist and writer Francisco Umbral.

Narrated by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Anatomía de un dandy sheds light on some of the least known  aspects of the writer’s life through exhaustive documentation work and the testimonies of the writer’s widow, friends and colleagues. Produced by Amor al Arte Producciones, Malvalanda, Dadá Films & Entertainment and RTVE, the documentary includes  the participation of the Valladolid Film Office (VAFO) and the Junta de Castilla y León.

After playing various episodic characters in television series, Charo López made her film debut in the late 1960s with two young directors who were also beginning their careers: Antonio Giménez Rico (El Hueso, 1967) and Gonzalo Suárez (Ditirambo, 1969). This was the beginning of a fruitful professional relationship with Suárez, with whom she also worked on The Strange Case of Doctor Fausto (1969), The Regent’s Wife (1974), Party (1977), Epílogo (1984), Don Juan in Hell (1991) and The Detective and Death (1994), in addition to the mini-series Los pazos de Ulloa (1985). The filmmaker will be among the group of professional colleagues accompanying Charo López on the day of her tribute.

Hers is also a regular presence in the filmography of Mario Camus, with whom she collaborated in The Beehive (1982), The Old Music (1985) and the TV  series Los camioneros (1974) and Fortunata y Jacinta (1980). Other major Spanish directors  who have cast her in their films include  Basilio Martín Patino (The Lost Paradise, 1985), Vicente Aranda (Time of Silence, 1986), Pedro Almodóvar (Kika, 1993), Daniel Calparsoro (Passages, 1996), Imanol Uribe (Full Moon, 1999), Juan Luis Iborra (Sugar Times, 2001) or Juanma Bajo Ulloa (Rey gitano, 2015).

A Goya nominee as Best Leading Actress for The Most Natural (Josefina Molina, 1991), she finally won the statuette years later in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in Montxo Armendáriz’s  Secrets of the Heart (1997).  The actress recently appeared in the series Three Days of Christmas (2019), produced  for the Netflix platform, and has been cast  in the upcoming film productions  Baby, where she works again with Juanma Bajo Ulloa, and Hoy se arregla el mundo, a by Argentinian director Rafael Winogard.

Castile and Leon’s films

In its 65th edition, the Valladolid International Film Festival  has programmed  a total of nine titles —four feature films and five short films— connected in one way or another with Castile and Leon’s autonomous community. This is the result of  the collaboration between  Seminci and the regional Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Castilla y León and the sponsorship of regional daily El Norte de Castilla. This year, both sections ‘Castilla y León en largo’ and ‘Castilla y León en corto’ (respectively for feature lengths and shorts) will be screened  online through the FILMIN platform. Additionally,   the Festival will set up a theatrical screening of the six short films in competition.

The lineup of titles selected for ‘Castilla y León en Largo’, in addition to the above-mentioned  Anatomía de un dandy, are the documentaries Construyendo la luz, by Eliseo de Pablos, which delves into  the work of Segovia-born artist Carlos Muñoz de Pablos, one of the great experts in the restoration and manufacturing of stained glass windows; Leon Felipe. El poeta peregrino, by Agustín Remesal, dedicated to the figure of the poet from Zamora; and Unblock Cuba, by Sergio Gregori Marugán, a journey through the recent history of Cuba and the changes that are taking place in the country after the resumption of the island’s bilateral relations with the United States.

‘Castilla y León en corto’, a competitive section with its own  jury made up of professionals from the audiovisual sector, will consist of five titles: the documentary short  Cosplay, más que disfrazarse,  by Estrella Asensio de la Fuente; María Guerra’s Un viaje inesperado; Juan Carlos Mostaza’s animated short Mostaza, and the fiction shorts De perfil, by Alejandro Renedo,  and Intermedio, by Bernabé Rico.