Seminci will host 90 film premieres, 29 of them world openings

• The 65th edition will treat fans to award-winning films at the Berlin, Sundance, Venice, Rotterdam and Warsaw festivals, as well as two titles with the Cannes Stamp of Approval and several films selected for the European Film Awards

22/10/2020.- The Valladolid International Film Festival will offer this year 150 titles -100 feature films and 50 short films- dished out  in 146 screening sessions over eight days. This year’s programme includes 90 premieres, of which 29 are world openings, two European and two international, in addition to 57 titles whose premiere in Spain will take place during the festival.

Seminci will also be presenting  four titles shortlisted at the European Film Awards: Servants (Ivan Ostrochovský), Persian Lessons (Vadim Perelman), Josep (Aurel) and the closing film, Un Triomphe (Emmanuel Courcol).

Other titles are preceded by their success in international film competitions. The Official Section contains most of these entries, such as There Is No Evil (Mohammad Rasoulof), the winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. The latter festival also granted  its  Crystal Bear, an award given by the Generation Plus children’s jury  to Sweet Thing (Alexandre Rockwell), a film that also won the Audience Award at the Pingyao International Film Festival.

Here We Are (Nir Bergman) and the above-mentioned Un Triomphe, received the Cannes 2020 Stamp of Approval. The Venice Film Festival, in turn, awarded  The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane) the prize for Best Screenplay as well as a Fipresci Award, and The Wasteland (Ahmad Bahrami) was dubbed Best Film in the Orizzonti section and moreover received a Fipresci Award in parallel sections.

The Cloud in Her Room (Zheng Lu Xinyuan) has just won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Festival; Minari (Lee Isaac Chung) bagged the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance; Servants (Ivan Ostrochovský) was featured in Encounters, the new competitive section of the Berlin Film Festival, and Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (Lili Horvát) garnered the FIPRESCI Award at the recently held 36th Warsaw International Film Festival. Finally, the Official Section short film The Unseen River (Phạm Ngọc Lân), received the award for the Best International Short at  the latest edition of the Vila do Conde film contest.

In Meeting Point, the Festival presents for the first time in Spain the film Wisdom Tooth, by Liang Ming, which premiered at the 3rd Pingyao International Film Festival in 2019, where it won the Fei Mu awards for Best Director (competitive section in Chinese language) and the Prize of the Jury at the Roberto Rossellini Awards (international competition), a rare achievement in the history of the contest. The section also features Mogul Mowgli, by Bassam Tariq, the winner of the FIPRESCI award in the Panorama section of the Berlinale.

Spanish Cinema brings together the most significant productions of  Spain’s film sector during the previous season, some of them awarded at the Málaga Festival. Such is the case of The Girls, Golden Biznaga and Silver Biznaga for Best Cinematography; Rosa’s Wedding, the recipient of the Jury’s Special Award and  the award for Best Supporting actor (Nathalie Poza); and Arenal, Silver Biznaga for Best Short Film. On the other hand,  Isabel Lamberti won the New Directors Award at the 68th edition of  the San Sebastian Film Festival for Last Days of Spring.