For the fifth consecutive year, the Festival will hold the RTVE Gala, featuring the premiere of the movie The Open Body, the first feature-length fiction film by the Asturian director Ángeles Huerta
RTVE will present at Seminci 17 fiction films and documentaries involving the co-production or particiation of Spain’s public broadcaster
Valladolid’s Municipal Foundation for Culture and Spain’s public broadcaster Radio Televisión Española (RTVE) have renewed the agreement whereby RTVE once again becomes a Silver Sponsor of the 67th edition of Seminci, which will take place from 22 to 29 October. By virtue of this agreement, RTVE will broadcast the Festival’s Closing Gala, which will be hosted by journalist Elena Sánchez, and provide wide coverage of Seminci’s main highlights in the corporation’s several news and cultural programmes, both on television and on radio.
RTVE and the audiovisual productions involving its participation will be an important presence in the upcoming 67th edition of the Valladolid Festival. On the one hand, Seminci will host for the fifth consecutive year the RTVE Gala, in which the public broadcaster will prescreen one of its film productions before its theatrical release, as it did in 2018 with Sin fin, by brothers César and José Esteban Alenda; in 2019 with So my Grandma’s a Lesbian!, by Ángeles Reiné; in 2020 with The Year of Fury, by Rafa Russo; and in 2021 with Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake, by Benito Zambrano, and Journey to Somewhere, by Helena de Llanos.
This year, the RTVE Gala will include the screening of O corpo aberto (The Open Body, 2022), the first feature-length fiction film by Asturias’ director Ángeles Huerta. Set in 1909, it tells the story of Miguel, a young teacher stationed at a small mountain village on the border between Spain and Portugal: Lobosandaus, an inhospitable place with ancestral traditions. He is a man of reason, but he cannot control his passionate desires and, as winter approaches, he feels darkness take hold of everything around him as his fascination with the enigmatic Dorinda grows. The film stars Tamar Novas, Victoria Guerra, María Vázquez and Nicolás Otero.
A graduate in Practical Filmmaking from the Met Film School in London, Ángeles Huerta (Gijón, 1974) directed short fiction films during her stay in England such as The Fetc’, which was selected for the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2017 she released her first feature, ‘Esquece Monelos’, a non-fiction film that tells the story of an underground river that has become a sewer under the streets of A Coruña, a title which was nominated for the Feroz Awards in the category of Best Documentary.
“Indispensable Figures”: Juan Antonio Bardem, a militant vitalist
The RTVE Gala will be held on Sunday 23 October at 4.30 pm in Teatro Zorrilla. The same venue will next host (at 7 pm) a round table discussion on Juan Antonio Bardem, the filmmaker whom Seminci is honouring this year, and the screening of RTVE’s documentary Imprescindibles: Juan Antonio Bardem, vitalista militante (2022), directed by Alberto Bermejo and David Herranz. The documentary portrays the filmmaker on the occasion of his centenary. He was considered “the third B” of Spanish cinema along with Berlanga and Buñuel, and belonged to a long theatrical saga that goes back two generations, with the Bardem and Muñoz Sampedro family branches and continues into the present with his nephews Carlos, Mónica and Javier Bardem.
This year, RTVE contributes 17 films and documentaries coproduced or cofunded by the corporation, including Félix Viscarret‘s Staring at Strangers, the film that will kickstart the Festival on 22 October. Also competing in the Official Section is Vasil, by Avelina Prat, screening on Tuesday 25, the Day of Spanish Cinema at Seminci. The film, starring Bulgarian Ivan Barnev, Spaniards Karra Elejalde, Alexandra Jiménez, Susi Sánchez and Britain’s Sue Flack, is the Valencia-born director’s debut feature. Vasil is a singular man, who exudes kindness, passion and a peculiar wisdom, sees life in a different way and tells fascinating little stories. He has been sleeping rough since he arrived from Bulgaria. Alfredo, a retired architect, takes him in his house for a while before the astonished look of his daughter Luisa. Alfredo, a retired architect, takes him in his home for a while under the astonished gaze of his daughter Luisa.
Meeting Point, the parallel competitive section that the Valladolid Festival dedicates to first and second films by new authors and to films from countries rarely exposed to Spanish audiences, will present in competition Eden, the debut feature by Estefanía Cortés scheduled for Monday 24. The title refers to the clandestine company which four strangers, played by Charlotte Vega, Israel Elejalde, Marta Nieto and Ramón Barea, resort to in order to take their own lives.
Spanish Cinema
Spanish Cinema, a section that brings together the best Spanish-produced films released in the last twelve months, will scren no fewer than nine feature films supported by RTVE. Three of them —The Beasts, the latest picture by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, El agua, and Suro, the debut films by Elena López Riera and Mikel Gurrea respectively— will premiere at Seminci before being released in commercial moviehouses. The section’s lineup of titles also includes Alcarràs (Carla Simón), Five Wolf Cubs (Alauda Ruiz de Azúa), The Gentiles (Santi Amodeo), You Have To Come and See It (Jonás Trueba), One Year, One Night (Isaki Lacuesta) and Unicorn Wars (Alberto Vázquez).
As for documentaries, the DOC. España section will screen the RTVE feature film coproductions, Clara Campoamor, un voto para despertar, by Rafael Alcázar; and La red Ponzán, by Ismael Gutiérrez; as well as Los constructores de la Alhambra, by Isabel Fernández, produced by RTVE. All three will compete for the DOC. España award in a competitive section that Seminci dedicates exclusively to Spanish documentaries.
