The 66th Seminci will host 127 premieres, 38 of them international

• The festival has also scheduled 83 Spanish premieres, including the first time  screenings in our country of five films shortlisted for the Oscars.

The 66th Valladolid International Film Festival (Seminci), scheduled for October 23-30, will host a total of 127 film premieres, including feature films and shorts, of which 38 will be international and 83 national releases. Likewise, the event will provide the stage for the first European screenings  of four other titles, an international premiere and a first time screening at a Spanish festival. In total, the 66th Seminci has programmed 230 films (154 feature films and 76 shorts), which will screen  in more than 300 sessions in six different venues (Teatro Calderón, Teatro Carrión, Teatro Zorrilla , Teatro Cervantes, Broadway Multiplex  and Sala Fundos) spanning eight days.

The festival will kick off  this Saturday 26th with Libertad, Clara Roquet’s debut, the inaugural film of this edition, which will compete   for the Golden Spike in the Official Section. On the other hand,  the French filmmaker Robert Guédiguian, whose involvement with Seminci spans several decades, will return to Valladolid for the worldwide premiere of his latest picture Mali Twist. The American Paul Schrader, who received the Festival’s Honorary Award  in 2013, and the Iranian Ashgar Farhadi will also be return to the Festival’s official selection in this 66th edition.

Seminci will present their  latest works in Spain,  respectively, The Card Counter and A Hero. The latter won the jury’s Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival ex eaquo with Compartment N. 6, by Juho Kuosmanen, which will also screen  at Seminci in what is in fact its Spanish premiere (the film is moreover Finland’s candidate for the Oscars). Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, by the Indonesian director Edwin, winner of the Golden Leopard at the latest edition of the Locarno Film Festival, will also have its premiere in Spain at Seminci.

This will not be the only internationally acclaimed  film that will have its Spanish launch during Seminci: this is also the case with Happening, by Audrey Diwan, Golden Lion in Venice, and Hive, by Blerta Basholli, Kosovo’s candidate for the Oscars and winner of three awards at Sundance’s  World Dramatic Competition, including one for Best Director. The list of national premieres also includes those of I’m Your Man, by Maria Schrader, selected by Germany for the  Oscars race; Clara sola, by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén, the first Costa Rican production  to be screened at Seminci, and Funny Boy, by the Indo-Canadian director Deepa Mehta, who chairs the International Jury of this 66th edition. The latter two  films are included in the Official Section, although the second screens out of competition.

The 15 feature films that make up Meeting Point will also  have their premiere in Spain at Seminci. These include Him, by Guro Bruusgaard, which lands at the  Valladolid Festival after receiving the award for Best Director in the international section of the Baltic Debuts Film Festival, and The Gravedigger’s Wife, by Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, Somalia’s choice for the Oscars. Also selected for Hollywood’s Academy Awards, this time in representation of Irish cinema, is Seán Breathnach‘s Shelter, which will likewise be screened for the first time in Spain during the Valladolid Festival. And still within this section, the short film The Campaign, by Cuba’s Eduardo del Llano, will have its world premiere here.

Corsini interpreta a Blomberg y Maciel, by Mariano Llinás, and Las cartas perdidas (out of competition), by Amparo Climent, both entries in Time of History, will also be premiered worldwide at Seminci, as will the short film La gàbia, by Adán Aliaga. On the other hand,  the Valladolid Festival will host the national launch of A Man and a Camera, a film by Guido Hendrikx that has been nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards. In addition, two film  tributes respectively  to José Luis García Berlanga and Fernando Fernán Gómez on the centenary of their births will be seen for the first time at Valladolid: Berlanga !!!, by Rafael Maluenda, and Journey to Somewhere, by Helena de Llanos. And this year the RTVE Gala will host the world premiere of Lemon and Poppy Seed Bread, by Benito Zambrano.

European premieres

As for European premieres, mention must be made of the following titles: The King of All the World, by Carlos Saura, showing in the Official Section out of competition; La QueenCiañera, by Pedro Peira, a feature film programmed in Time of History and a candidate for the Rainbow Spike;  and the short films Bajo la superficie, by Pablo Spátola (included in the retrospective Wild Stories, Extraordinary Tales: Two Decades of Argentine Cinema), and My Last Adventure, by Ezequiel Salinas and Ramiro Sanzini, which takes part in this year’s Official Section (the other 11 shorts in this section will be first-time screenings in Spain).  In turn, the Argentine short film The Record, by Daniel Elías, will premiere internationally at Seminci.

The 66th Film Week will also be the first Spanish festival to screen Songs my Brother Taught Me, the film with which the Chinese director Chloé Zhao debuted in 2015, before  her second film, The Rider, won the Silver Spike and the Pilar Miró Award for Best New Director at the 62nd Seminci. The movie is part of Dissidences: New Filmmakers, New Gazes, a retrospective which puts the focus on  the innovative narrative proposals of 16 international filmmakers.