Olivier Assayas, Maura Delpero, Miguel Gomes, Alain Guiraudie, Guan Hu and Athina Rachel Tsangari will compete for the Golden Spike at SEMINCI

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Olivier Assayas, Maura Delpero, Miguel Gomes, Alain Guiraudie, Guan Hu and Athina Rachel Tsangari will compete for the Golden Spike at SEMINCI

Wednesday, 11 September - 2024

Olivier Assayas, Maura Delpero, Miguel Gomes, Alain Guiraudie, Guan Hu and Athina Rachel Tsangari will compete for the Golden Spike at SEMINCI

September 11, 2024

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The competition will also feature new works by filmmakers like Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha (My Favourite Cake), Emanuel Parvu (Three Kilometres to the End of the World), Alonso Ruizpalacios (La Cocina), Dag Johan Haugerud (Sex) and Yeo Siew Hua (Stranger Eyes).
The Official Section is completed with the debut films by Ariane Labed (September Says), Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel (Armand) and Agathe Riedinger (Wild Diamond).
The Most Precious of Chargoes, the first animated film by Michel Hazanavicius, will be screened out of competition.

Great European and international filmmakers will compete for the Golden Spike at SEMINCI, which in its Official Section will be programming the latest works by French filmmakers Olivier Assayas (Suspended Time) and Alain Guiraudie (Misericordia), the Portuguese Miguel Gomes (Grand Tour), the Chinese Guan Hu (Black Dog) and the Greek Athina Rachel Tsangari (Harvest), as well as the Italian Maura Delpero presenting Vermiglio, the brand new Grand Jury Prize winner at the recently held Venice Film Festival.

Joining them are the new and eagerly awaited works by the Iranian filmmakers Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha (My Favourite Cake), the Norwegian Dag Johan Haugerud (Sex), the Romanian Emanuel Parvu (Three Kilometres to the End of the World), the Mexican Alonso Ruizpalacios (La cocina) and the Singaporean Yeo Siew Hua (Stranger Eyes).

The Official Section will also include in competition the debut films by the Greek director Ariane Labed (September Says), the Norwegian Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel – grandson of Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman – (Armand), and the French director Agathe Riedinger (Wild Diamond). Michel Hazanavicius, another big name in international cinema, will present his animated film The Most Precious of Cargoes out of competition.

Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel presents Armand, his brilliant directorial debut, winner of the Camera d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World) gives a powerful performance as a high-spirited single mother who is summoned to an emergency meeting at school when her 6-year-old son is accused of provoking a serious incident with another classmate. This incident triggers a series of events that force parents and school staff into a battle of madness, desire and obsession. Avalon is in charge of the distribution of the film in Spain.

Guan Hu (Cow, The Eight Hundred) directs Black Dog, best film in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, the story of an ex-convict redeemed thanks to the unusual friendship he forges with a dog. Set in a remote city in the Gobi Desert, the protagonist works on a patrol to rid the city of stray dogs ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Guan Hu, renowned for his innovative staging, narrates in Black Dog how ordinary people perceive and suffer the transformations of their country, punctuated with moments of tension, humour and tenderness. Starring and produced by Jia Zhangke, the film will be distributed by Surtsey Films.

Agathe Riedinger‘s Wild Diamond, the only debut film this year in the Official Section of the Cannes Film Festival, portrays fame on social media and television as an illusory escape from poverty. Liane, 19, lives with her mother and sister in a suburban French town. She has tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok thanks to her image, sensual videos and dances. Obsessed by her aspirations for beauty and stardom, she takes part in a casting to become a contestant on the reality show Miracle Island. Caramel Films is distributing the film.

Grand Tour is one of the critics’ favourite films of the year, an oriental fantasy by Miguel Gomes (Tabu, Arabian Nights), one of the great auteurs of our time, winner of the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. Edward, a civil servant in the British Empire in 1918 Burma, runs away from his fiancée Molly on the day she arrives to get married. Molly, determined to get married and moved by Edward’s decision, follows in his footsteps on this great Asian journey, in a game of mirrors in which the couple, separately, experience numerous adventures. Shot on celluloid in black and white, this dream-like story shatters clichés about what the East represents for the West. The film is distributed by Avalon.

Harvest takes place in an unnamed town in an indeterminate place, with a small, innocent rural community unfamiliar with ideas such as power, guilt, action and revenge. Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg, Chevalier), a leading exponent of the new wave of Greek cinema alongside Yorgos Lanthimos and Georgis Grigorakis, adapts Jim Crace‘s novel Harvest, in which this community is tested by the arrival of strange characters – a cartographer, an immigrant and a banker – metaphors for the trauma of modernity. Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Nitram, X-Men: First Generation) and Harry Melling (The Queen’s Gambit, Harry Potter) star in this film, shot on celluloid and featuring cinematography by Sean Prince Williams -director of The Sweet East- distributed by Filmin in Spain.

Olivier Assayas (Disorder, Irma Vep, Summer Hours) presents his most personal film, Suspended Time, in which he reflects on his family’s past using his experience of the 2020 confinement in the family home. Narrated by Assayas himself, in Suspended Time a film director, played by Vincent Macaigne (The Things We Say, The Things We Do, Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe) and his brother, a music journalist played by Micha Lescot (The Almond Tree, Cyrano, My Love) -the two alter egos of Assayas himself and his brother in real life- together with their new partners. The house becomes another character in the film, each room containing memories of their childhood and of absent people -parents, neighbours- which leads the brothers to recall the roots they share, a story peppered with touches of comedy. Distributed by ADSO Films Spain.

Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios (Güeros, Museo, A Cop Movie) presents his first film in the United States, La cocina (The Kitchen), starring actress Rooney Mara (The Social Network, Carol, The Millennium saga). Ruizpalacios steps into The Grill, a New York City diner frequented by thousands of tourists a day, to narrate the fast-paced relationship of Pedro, an undocumented Mexican immigrant and dreamer in love with Julia, a waitress who needs money for an abortion. Events escalate when Pedro is accused of stealing money from the cash register. Ruizpalacios draws on the stories and experience of migrants from all over the world who come to New York in search of a better life, and exposes the caste system that still exists in modern kitchens. Avalon is distributing this film in Spain, shot in black and white.

Sex, secrets, lies and religion are the ingredients of Misericordia, a dark comedy by Alain Guiraudie, another of the great contemporary European authors, produced by Andergraun Films (Montse Triola and Albert Serra). Young Jérémie returns to Saint-Martial, a small village in the French countryside, to attend the funeral of his former boss. As he decides to stay a few days at the departed’s home, Jérémie becomes involved in a disappearance, receives threats from the deceased’s son and some neighbours, and is the target of the shady intentions of a priest who seems to be everywhere. Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake) unrestrainedly addresses the emergence of instincts and irrepressible human desires in this provocative film starring Félix Kysyl (Consent), distributed in Spain by Karma Films.

My Favourite Cake, winner of the Fipresci Award at the Berlinale, is the new film by the Iranian creative duo Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha -winner of the ‘Pilar Miro’ award at the 66th SEMINCI for Ballad of a White Cow. The film shows a crack in the morality imposed by the Iranian regime with the story of a 70-year-old woman from Tehran who has lived a solitary life since her husband died and her daughter left for Europe. The woman takes the initiative to give herself a second chance at love and unexpectedly meets an old taxi driver, with whom she has a charming and amusing evening. Underneath this seemingly simple story, lies a subtle and politically subversive message of hope, for which the filmmakers have had their passports withdrawn and have been banned from travelling outside Iran. The film is being distributed by A Contracorriente Films.

September Says, the directorial debut of French-Greek actress Ariane Labed (The Souvenir and Attenberg, winner of the Volpi Cup in Venice), delves into the complexity of female psychology through a widowed woman and her two daughters, September and July, two eccentrically behaved teenagers. The family arrives in a small town in Ireland, where the sisters suffer from bullying at school. July and September are inseparable, but very different: September is protective and distrustful, while July is open and curious. The relationship between the two goes from co-dependence -Septiembre subjects her sister to sinister games- to distrust when July becomes interested in a schoolmate. Spanish distribution is handled by Elastica Films.

Sex is the first part of the Sex Dreams Love trilogy about desire, identity and the longing for freedom by Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud (Beware of Children). In Sex, he explores intimacy and freedom in modern relationships and gender roles through the story of two men, both in heterosexual marriages, who work as chimney sweeps. Both confess to having had a sexual encounter with another man, without considering it either as an expression of homosexuality or infidelity. One discusses it with his wife; the other imagines himself as a woman in his dreams and wonders to what extent his personality is shaped by the gaze of others. Winner of the Ecumenical Jury, C.I.C.A.E. and Europa Cinemas awards at the Berlin Film Festival, Sex will be distributed in Spain by Filmin.

After the inexplicable disappearance of their young daughter, a young couple receive strange videos and realise that someone has been filming their daily lives, revealing their most intimate moments. Stranger Eyes, by Yeo Siew Hua (A Land Imagined, Golden Leopard at Locarno and Best Cinematography Award at the 63rd SEMINCI), uses the codes of the thriller to deal lucidly and profoundly with the emotional turmoil that erupts within a young couple when their most intimate secrets are discovered. Starring Taiwanese actor and director Lee Kang Sheng (The Wayward Cloud, Blue Sun Palace), a regular in Tsai Ming-Liang’s films, the film will be distributed by La Aventura Audiovisual.

Three Kilometres to the End of the World, by Emanuel Parvu (Mikado), a mixture of drama and crime film, deals with the investigation of the case of a boy savagely beaten in an act of homophobic violence in a village in the Romanian countryside. The police case, however, takes a back seat to highlight the fact that the repressive norms of rural Romania imposed by tradition, power and the church take precedence over everything else. The rumours, the passivity of the witnesses, the obscurantist thoughts and the delusions of the neighbours aim to leave things as they are. Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, awarded the Queer Palm, and winner of the Best Foreign Short Film Award at the 63rd SEMINCI, Parvu’s film will be distributed by Vértigo Films.

Vermiglio, by Maura Delpero (Maternal), recently awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, is the name of a small village in the mountains of northern Italy, where this story is set in 1944, in the throes of the Second World War. The village teacher has a large family: three daughters, each with very different strong personalities, and three sons. The arrival in the village of a deserting soldier who is hiding in the mountains upsets their lives, especially the life of one of the sisters. Delpero tackles motherhood, the oppression of patriarchy and the passing of time with a dazzling mise-en-scène reminiscent of the poetic tradition of Italian cinema. Karma Films distributes the film in Spain.

The Most Precious of Cargoes is Michel Hazanavicius‘ (The Artist, The Search, Redoubtable) first foray into the world of animation, a film that offers another perspective on the narrative of the Holocaust in cinema and which will be screened out of competition. A poor woodcutter and his wife live in a large forest when one day, the woman rescues a baby thrown from one of the many trains that constantly pass through the forest and transforms their lives, and those whose paths the child crosses, including the man who threw her from the train. Focusing on the theme of anti-Semitism and how the Polish people themselves promoted the annihilation of the Jewish people, Hazanavicius’s animation is beautifully narrated by Jean-Louis Trintignant (Z, Three Colours: Red, Amour) in his last film before his death. BTeam Pictures will distribute the film in Spain.

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