Lili Horvát, a clear winner at the 65th Seminci: “These awards have really surpassed my expectations

• Brother tandem formed by  Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser, the winners of the 65th Seminci’s Silver Spike,  talk with the president of the International Jury Peter Beale at Valladolid’s Teatro Calderón.
• The Hungarian director, whose film has bagged no fewer than three awards, sent an emotional video-message where she thanked the Valladolid Festival.
• Arab and Tarzan Nasser, the winners of the Silver Spike, dedicated the award “to all Palestinians who continue to seek hope for living.”

10/31/2020.- The film Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time by Hungarian director Lili Horvát became the undisputed  winner of the 65th edition of Seminci. The feature, which  competed  in the Official Section along with 13 other titles, has won the Golden Spike, the top award at the Valladolid Festival.

Lili Horvát’s second film also bagged the Pilar Miró award for Best New Director and the Best Actress Award for Natasa Stork. Speaking from her home via videoconference,  the Hungarian director thanked the Festival and the International Jury for having awarded her work. “It has been a huge  honour to win these awards. I had screened my  previous film in the Meeting Point programme of the Festival and I already felt honoured by the film’s entry in the Official Section this year.  My film winning three awards really goes far beyond  my expectations and I want to thank the Festival and the Jury from the bottom of my heart,” she said.

Actress Natasa Stork also addressed the closing gala viewers from her home: “I feel blessed by this award, I am very happy.”

Javier Angulo, the director of the Valladolid Festival, and the president of the 65th edition’s  International Jury  Peter Beale.

The second most important award of Seminci, the Silver Spike, went this year to  the Palestinian film Gaza mon amour, by twin filmmakers  Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser, who were still in  Valladolid and dedicated the award “to all the Palestinians who continue to seek hope for living.” The Nasser brothers also won the Miguel Delibes Award for Best Screenplay ex aequo  with Fadette Drouard.

In Meeting Point, the Festival’s parallel section,  the award for Best Feature Film went to Khate farzi (180 ° Rule), by Iran’s Farnoosh Samadi, who, in addition to expressing gratitude for this distinction, said she would love to return to  Seminci next year with a new movie.

Also awarded  in this 65th edition of the Valladolid Festival was Juliana Fanjul, whose documentary Radio Silence received Time of History’s  First Prize. “Thank you, Valladolid, for supporting  resistance and survival; this fills us with the hope we need to struggle on in these difficult times,” said the director from her home.

It is worth noting that with the awards for Lilli Horvát in the Official Section, Farnoosh Samadi in Meeting Point and Juliana Fanjul in Time of History, this is the first time ever at Seminci that  three women directors win the top prizes in the Festival’s main sections.

Other winners in the 65th edition still present in Valladolid also thanked Seminci for its titanic efforts in order to hold a safe physical festival  under the current circumstances,  as well as the Juries for awarding their work.

Fernando Pomares, the winner of the Golden Spike and the Best European Short Film award for El Mártir, expressed his “huge joy at having been awarded” and congratulated the entire festival team for putting together a face-to-face Seminci this year. “Online platforms  help, but if there is no physical encounter, it’s not real.”