‘Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time’ wins the Golden Spike of the 65th Seminci

• The Hungarian film also bagged  the Pilar Miró award for Best New Director (Lilli Horvát) and the award for Best Actress for the movie’s protagonist (Natasa Stork)
•  ‘Gaza mon amour’, by brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser, wins the Silver Spike and the Miguel Delibes award for Best Screenplay
•  Three women sign the winning films of the Festival’s main sections: Lilli Horvát in the Official Section, Farnoosh Samadi in Meeting Point and Juliana Fanjul in Time of History

31/10/2020.- The Hungarian production Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time has won the Golden Spike of the 65 Valladolid International Film Festival. The second film by director Lili Horvát has also won the Pilar Miró award for Best New Director,  and the award for Best Actress went to Natasa Stork, who plays the film’s lead role.

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time tells the story of Márta, a 40-year-old neurosurgeon who leaves behind her brilliant career in the United States to return to Budapest and  start a new life with the man she loves. When they meet, however, the man claims that he has never seen her before.

By programming this film in the Official Section, Seminci stays true to its  commitment to the younger generation of  filmmakers whose career the Festival keeps a close eye on. Lili Horvát participated in the Meeting Point section  of the 60th edition with The Wednesday Child, her debut feature, and now she has achieved  the highest award of Seminci  with her sophomore feature. The same thing can be said about twin brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser, who have harvested both the Silver Spike and the Miguel Delibes award for best screenplay with their second film, Gaza mon amour, years after Seminci programmed their feature debut, Dégradé, in the Official Section, once again during  the 60th edition.

The winning titles in the three main sections of the Festival have women filmmakers behind the cameras: Lili Horvát in the Official Selection, Farnoosh Samadi, the winner of Meeting Point’s first prize with 180º Rule,  and Juliana Fanjul, who won  the  Time of History top prize for Radio Silence.

The Ribera del Duero award for Best Director has gone ex aequo to a couple of new directors: Aurel, for his first feature film Josep, and Ivan Ostrochovský for Servants, his second fiction feature film.

The jury, formed  by British producer Peter Beale; Spanish screenwriter Alicia Luna; film producer Antonio Pérez; French distributor and producer Stéphane Sorlat; and Spanish actress Emma Suárez, have granted  the Best Actor Award to Shai Avivi for his role as the father and carer  of his autistic son in the film Here We Are, by Israeli filmmaker Nir Bergman.

In the technical section of the awards list, the Jury recognised the work of Matthias Delvaux with the  award for Best Cinematography in the film  The Cloud in Her Room, while the José Salcedo award for Best Editing went to Vassela Martschewski for Persian Lessons.

The Jury, which also awarded a special mention for the film There is no Evil, by Mohammad Rasoulof, has rewarded  El mártir, by Fernando Pomares, the Golden Spike for Best Short Film as well as  the EFA award. The Silver Spike, in turn, went to the Canadian short Moi, Barnabè, by Jean-François Lévesque.

As regards the Official Section’s Audience award, sponsored by veteran daily  El Norte de Castilla, the winning title was Nowhere Special, by Uberto Pasolini, with a ratio of 4.57 on a scale  of 5.

Meeting Point

The Meeting Point jury, formed by  Argentine filmmaker and writer Enrique Gabriel, Romanian producer Razvan Lazarovici, and  Spanish producer and distributor Paco Poch, decided to award the section’s first prize to 180º Rule, by Farnoosh Samadi. The film tells the story of  Sara, a school teacher whom her students love and who is  married to Hamed. As her family gets ready  to attend a wedding in northern Iran, an unforeseen obligation falls on Hamed and derails their plans. When Sara’s husband suddenly forbids her to attend the event without him, she makes a decision that will set her on the painful path of atonement.

The Iranian filmmaker adds one more Seminci award to her record, as she is the only filmmaker to have won two consecutive Seminci Golden Spikes: in 2016 for Il silenzio, the Golden Spike for Best Short Film in the 61st Film Week (which she co-directed with Ali Asgari); and the following year, this time as a solo winner, for the short Gaze (2017).

The jury, which also dedicated  a special mention to  Alejandro Tarraf‘s Lonely Rock, decided that  the Meeting Point award for Best International Short Film should go to Omelia Contadina, by JR and Alice Rohrwacher, whereas the award for  Best Spanish Short Film went to Stanbrook, by Óscar Bernàcer.

The section’s  Audience award, again sponsored and organised by El Norte de Castilla, went ex aequo to a couple of titles which scored a ratio of 5 on a 5-point scale: This is My Desire, by brothers Arie and  Chuko Esiri, and The Best is Yet to Come by Jing Wang.

Time of History and  DOC.España

Juliana Fanjul‘s Radio Silence garnered  the first prize in the Time of History section. The documentary examines  the figure of the journalist Carmen Aristegui, who is fired from the radio station where she has worked for years. Supported by over 18  million listeners, Carmen continues  her struggle with the aim of raising awareness and combating  misinformation.

The jury, formed by  director Sally Gutiérrez, documentary producer and director of the DocsBarcelona initiative, Joan González Herrero, and the director of Scotland’s  Ibero-American Documentary Film Festival IberoDocs, Mar Felices, has awarded the section’s second prize to The Reason I Jump, by Jerry Rothwell, as well dedicating  a special mention to Little Red Riding Hood, by Tatiana Mazú.

In the short film subsection, the award went to  Mariano Lumbreras’s 57 días, while Huntsville Station, by Jaime Meltzer and Chris Filippone, received a special mention.

In the DOC.España documentary programme the winner was  Tierra de leche y miel, by Gonzalo Recio, Héctor Domínguez-Viguera and Carlos Mora Fuentes. The jury was formed by producer and consultant Ana Amigo, multidisciplinary artist Nadia Hotait and producer and director Tomás Martínez Antolín, who have awarded a special mention to El niño de fuego (“The Fire Boy”), by Ignacio Acconcia.

Finally, De Perfil, by Alejandro Renedo, won the award of the Castile and León For Short section, following the decision of a jury composed by director and screenwriter Pilar García Elegido, actress Elisabeth Larena and film critic Marta Medina del Valle, which also dedicated a special mention to Reflejo, by Juan Carlos Mostaza.

Other awards

The Green Spike jury of Seminci’s  65th edition, formed by Carlos de Hita, David González Sanz and José Manuel Rodríguez Fernández, has unanimously decided to award this environmentalist award to the feature film Climate Exodus, by David Baute.

On the other hand, the Rainbow Spike jury of the 65th Seminci, integrated by  Inés Modrón Lecue, José Ramón Rubín Linares and Yolanda Rodríguez Valentín, has decided to award the corresponding  Spike of this 65th edition to the Swedish short film The Night Train, by director Jerry Carlsson.

Finally, the jury for the Golden Blogos Award (Carlos Minondo, Alberto Vandenbroucke and Daniel Farriol) decided to award the prize to the film There Is No Evil, by Mohammad Rasoulof.

• The full list of awards can be read here.