Meeting Point spotlights the innovative gaze of new European and international filmmakers

• The section dedicated to unusual cinematography on our screens has scheduled another 15 short films, six of them Spanish, which will participate in The Night of the Spanish Short Film.

The Meeting Point section, the competitive parallel showcase that the Valladolid International Film Festival dedicates to new authors and unusual cinematography on our screens, during this 66th edition will be screening the first and second feature films by filmmakers who take on directing with a fresh look and searching for new narrative languages. The selected films, 15 in total, will compete for a first prize of €20,000. The section will also bring together another nine international short films and another six Spanish ones, which will be screened in The Night of the Spanish Short Film.

European productions will be in the majority in this section, which from this continent will include the films A Brixton Tale (Darragh Carey, Bertrand Desrochers, United Kingdom), about the encounter of a young and wealthy YouTuber with a boy living in the infamous public housing development known as the Barrier Block; The Dorm (Roman Vasyanov, Russia), about a group of friends living in a student dormitory in the Soviet Union in 1984, the same era in which Erasing Frank (Gábor Fabricius, Hungary) is set, about a charismatic lead-singer of a punk band banned in Hungary who the regime tries to silence, or The Gravedigger’s Wife (Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, Finland/Germany/France), the story of a married couple living in Djibouti whose reality is upended when they are told that the wife urgently needs an expensive operation to treat chronic kidney disease.

Also produced in Europe are the feature films Foscadh (Seán Breathnach, Ireland), set in the rugged mountains of Connemara, which tells the story of a naive and lonely character, John Cunliffe, who at the age of 28 is suddenly forced by circumstances to become a grown man; La Traviata, My Brothers and I (Yohan Manca, France), about a 14-year-old boy who lives with his brothers in a sheltered housing estate in the south of France and takes turns looking after their comatose mother; and Wood and Water (Jonas Bak, Germany/France/Hong Kong), the story of a recently retired woman who decides to fly to Hong Kong to see her son.

Several films are directed by women. Specifically, the European productions Han (Guro Bruusgaard, Norway), shows a day in the life of three male characters who are going through a social and emotional slump; Persona non grata (Lisa Jespersen, Denmark), tells the story of a woman who distanced herself from her family that lives in the countryside, and moved to Copenhagen to become a writer and live the bohemian lifestyle; and Celts (Milica Tomović, Serbia), set in 1993 in Belgrade, is the story of a woman who sneaks out of the house unseen during her daughter’s birthday and wanders the empty streets in search of authentic experiences instead of mere surrogates.

From outside Europe, the Meeting Point section will offer three other productions directed by women: Mis hermanos sueñan despiertos  (Claudia Huaiquimilla, Chile), about two brothers who have been held in a juvenile detention centre for a year; The Son(Noushin Meraji, Iran), which tells the story of a forty-year-old man who must deal with the sudden death of his mother, and Zahorí (Marí Alessandrini, Switzerland/Argentina/Chile/France), in which the Argentine filmmaker tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who wants to be a gaucho, rebels against school and asserts herself to her parents, an ecologist couple.

Meeting Point is completed with the feature films Streetwise (Na Jiazuo, China), about a young man from a small town who becomes a debt collector and henchman for Xi Jun to pay his ailing father’s hospital bills, and The Story of Southern Islet (Keat Aun Chong, Malaysia), a film set in 1987 at the foot of Mount Keriang and revolving around Cheong, a devotee of the popular deity called Datuk Gong, while his wife Yan has different beliefs.

Short films and The Night of the Spanish Short Film

The Meeting Point section will offer another nine international short films during this 66th Seminci: La campaña (Eduardo del Llano, Cuba), Cradle (Paul Muresan, Romania), The Criminals (Serhat Karaaslan, France/Romania/Turkey), Like The Ones I Used To Know (Annie St-Pierre, Canada), Intercom 15 (Andrei Epure, Romania), A Present Light (Diogo Costa Amarante, Portugal), Stories Keep Me Awake At Night (Jeremy van der Haegan, Belgium), Techno mama (Saulius Baradinskas, Lithuania) and Vadim On A Walk (Sasha Svirsky, Russia).

The selection of short films is completed with the six titles selected for the section The Night of the Spanish Short Film, which will compete for a €3,000 award: Está amaneciendo, by Guillermo Benet; Etxean, by Mikel Rueda; Las infantas, by Andrea H. Catalá; Intentando, by Juan Manuel Montilla El Langui; Romance, by Álvaro de Miguel, and Somni, by María del Carme Galmés Fons.