RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Mexico will compete for the best Ibero-American film this Saturday for the Goya Awards.
This is the 36th edition of the event that has Spain in euphoria today. The enthusiasm for cinema in the Iberian nation has two main reasons: the four nominations for the Oscars and the presence of numerous stars at the evening event at the Palau de Les Arts in Valencia, the magnificent port city developing an intense week of love for the seventh art.
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Although La Cordillera de los sueños, the latest gem from Chilean director Patricio Guzmán, is a novelty due to its documentary nature, the powerful message of the film could be a milestone in the category in which it competes with three other notable feature films: Las siamesas (Argentina), Los Lobos (Mexico) and Canción sin Nombre (Peru).
Before the pandemic crisis, he won the Ojo de Oro prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival with this documentary, which concludes a powerful trilogy about Chile and the traces of the bloody coup d’état of 1973.
In Nostalgia for the Light, the first part of the trilogy, Guzmán settled in the world’s driest desert, the Atacama, and joined people searching for the remains of prisoners who disappeared during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. He received a mention in Cannes and the highest award in Biarritz in 2010.
Then he landed The Pearl Button, Silver Bear at the Berlinale, the exuberant nature of Chilean Patagonia, the virtually exterminated indigenous people and Pinochet’s prisoners thrown from small planes into the sea, alive and tied to train tracks.
His Goya contenders, however, are not insignificant works. Las siamesas by Paula Hernández, a small fable about a mother and her daughter, with much care for script, photography, and music.
Los Lobos by Samuel Kishi offers a unique portrait of immigration and its emotional conflicts through the eyes of two children with tenderness and drama. And finally, Canción sin Nombre by Melina León, an approach to Peru’s violent past in an opera prima that promises much without being compelling.
The awards ceremony will take place next Saturday. It will offer extraordinary moments with the presentation of the prizes to the Spaniard José Sacristán for his lifetime achievement and the Australian Cate Blanchet, the first international award in the history of the Goya Awards.
At 84 years old and in the middle of his career, Sacristán is one of the references for acting in Spain and Latin America.
“It’s a constant learning process; there are people who have died of old age and still do it as badly as the first day,” he said a few days ago in a meeting with journalists.
With various registers, ranging from the subtle irony full of biting humor to the most profound drama, she made it clear that a departure from acting is not in her plans: “No retirement, I would rather be a nun”.
Cate Blanchet is one of the great actresses of today. Two Oscars, three Golden Globes, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three BAFTAs are the highlights of the career of the actress of Blue Jasmine, The Aviator, Babel, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Where Art Thou, Bernadette, and Carol.
In case something was still missing, singer-songwriters Luz Casal and Joaquin Sabina were announced, in addition to the three Spanish Oscar nominees, the happy couple Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and music composer Alberto Iglesias.