Meeting Point screens fourteen films focusing on the difficulties of adolescence and family relationships

European productions predominate with seven films, with other works coming from Argentina, South Korea, the USA, Mexico and Pakistan

The section, with eight feature-length films directed by women, includes 17 short films, nine from other countries and another eight which will compete in the Spanish Short Film Night

The Meeting Point section, the competitive parallel section that the Valladolid International Film Festival dedicates to first and second films by new filmmakers and to offerings rarely shown on our screens, will this time round screen the work of filmmakers who mostly tackle common issues, such as the difficulties of adolescence or mother-child relationships, but from different perspectives.

A total of 14 selected films will compete for a first prize of €20,000. The section includes an additional nine international short films and a further eight which will be screened in the Spanish Short Film Night.

European productions predominate with seven films, including Astrakan (David Depesseville, France), selected for the Locarno International Film Festival; Love According to Dalva (Emmanuelle Nicot, Belgium/France), screened in the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Fipresci prize; Excess Will Save Us (Morgane Dziurla-Petit, Sweden), winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Rotterdam International Film Festival; Sick of Myself (Christoffer Borgli, Norway/Sweden), selected for the section Un Certain Regard at Cannes; The Sparrow (Michael Kinirons, Ireland), and the two already announced Spanish productions: Edén (Estefanía Cortés, Spain) and Vasil (Avelina Prat, Spain/Bulgaria).

From outside Europe, Meeting Point will offer five productions from the Americas, with two from Argentina, titled Carrero (Fiona Lena Brown and Germán Basso) and Cuando la miro (Julio Chávez y Mariano Biasín), one from Mexico titled El grosor del polvo (Jonathan Hernández), and two productions from the USA: Palm Trees and Power Lines (Jamie Dack), which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival where it took home the award for Best Director in the US Dramatic Competition, and War Pony (Gina Gammell and Riley Keough), winner of the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

The feature length film selection of Meeting Point is completed with two productions from Asia: The Apartment with Two Women (Kim Se-in, South Korea), which won the New Trends prize at the Busan Film Festival and was selected for the Panorama section at the Berlin Film Festival, and Joyland (Saim Sadiq, Pakistan), winner of the Queer Palm award and the Jury Prize in the section Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

International short films and the Spanish Short Film Night

The 67th edition of Seminci will offer in its Meeting Point section another nine international short films: Christopher at Sea (Tom C J Brown, USA), Datsun (Mark Albiston, New Zealand), III (Salomé Villeneuve, Canada), Happy New Year, Jim (Andrea Gatopoulos, Italy), O homem do lixo (Laura Gonçalves, Portugal), Same Old (Lloyd Lee Choi, USA), Slow Light (Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski, Poland), The Spiral (María Silvia Esteve, Argentina), and What Rhymes with Toxic (Lynn Smith, Canada).

The short films selection, which will compete for a prize of €3,000, is completed with the eight offerings selected for the Spanish Short Film Night section: Cosas de niños, by Bernabé Rico; El perro de un torero, by Sandra Romero; Has estado, hace tiempo, by Gerard Oms; L’avenir, by Santiago Ráfales; Semillas, by Toni Bestard; Solo un ensayo, by Hugo Sanz; Tormenta de verano, by Laura García Alonso, and Princesa, by Cecilia Gessa, out of competition.