The Calella Film Festival, the Maresme Film Festival, delivered its awards on Saturday night to the centennial Sala Mozart in Calella. The Andalusian Enrique García won the Llopa award, the symbol of the festival, as best director, for his film “La Mancha Negra”, an intense portrait of deep Andalusia, of the struggles between families in black Andalusia.
Enrique García explains that the success of Andalusian cinema in so many festivals is due to the fact that «Andalusia loves cinema very much and we work hard with our feet on the ground. Of course, we greatly admire Catalan cinema for the ESCAC school and for the Catalan will to create an industry. Catalan cinema generates talent and also industry. We aspire to have this type of training and continuity. We need more audiovisual industry.”
“The First Death of Joana”, directed by the Brazilian Cristiane Oliveira, won the Jury Prize for Best Film in the Low Budget section, for its intimate portrait of a girl who discovers that her aunt died a virgin.
In the Creative Rosebud category, the big winner of the night was the Ukrainian director Zaza Buadze, for “Mother of Apostles”, a plea against the war in Ukraine and against all wars.
The Consul of Ukraine in Barcelona, accompanied by a delegation from the consulate, attended the screening of the film that was made at the Teatro Principal de Arenys a few days ago and was moved, like all the spectators, by the journey that a mother Ukrainian does in order to find her son during the war in this eastern country.
Zaza Buadze believes that the success of his film at festivals around the world such as Moscow or New York is due to the fact that “it deals with a universal theme and the feelings are the same all over the world”. Zaza Buadze affirms that «we have found ourselves very well in Calella during this Festival and soon we will go to Toronto, Canada, to take the film as well. Everyone is liking it.”
The audience award went to the Finnish musical film, with a French production, “Le café de mes souvenirs”. The actresses from the film Eveliina Kauhanen and Ines Kakkonen traveled to Calella and collected the award with the director of the film, Valto Baltzar.
With this sixth edition, the Calella Film Festival consolidates itself as the Film Festival of the entire Maresme, since the projections have also been in cinemas in Arenys de Mar and Sant Pol de Mar. The organization’s plan is to return to make passes in Mataró next year, as happened in 2019, and expand to other cities in the Maresme.
Screenplay Contest
The Calella Film Festival is committed to an unprecedented contest in Catalonia, a contest to reward the best scripts. In this section, the best script of the Maresme went to the creator from Maresme, Roger Tartera, with «El nido roto».
The best script according to the Jury, chaired by Sergi Pompermayer, was for the story “Ultramar”, by Raúl Mancilla.
Reactivate the projection rooms
In addition to promoting first films and independent cinema, the objective of the Calella Film Festival is also to reactivate cinemas, which have suffered an intense crisis due to the pandemic and the expansion of television platforms.
The centennial Sala Mozart de Calella is still standing and more active than ever. The Sala Mozart was the venue chosen by the Catalan Film Academy to present the prizes to centenary cinemas throughout Catalonia. Later, the Gaudí Audience Award from the Catalan Film Academy was presented from Calella. Jaume Figueras and Gemma Nierga traveled to the Sala Mozart to present the event, which was broadcast throughout Catalonia.
Two sections
The festival’s programming focuses on the two competitive sections. The Low Budget section was born with the festival and includes productions with budgets of less than 500,000 euros. These productions are usually first films and the festival found that they had many problems accessing the market.
The Creative Rosebud Awards section is dedicated to films with a budget of more than 500,000 euros, with no limit, and which have stood out in 2020 for their creativity.
Article written by journalist Alex M. Franquet
