- Léa Seydoux, Juliette Binoche, Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush, Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Lindon, and Alicia Vikander star in some of the new films competing for the Golden Spike
- Filmmakers Andrea Pallaoro, Lance Hammer, Isabelle Stever, and Shinya Tsukamoto round out the main competitive section of the 71st edition, which will feature 22 feature films
The 71st edition of the Valladolid International Film Festival (SEMINCI) has added nine new films to its Official Section, directed by filmmakers such as Lisandro Alonso, Alain Gomis, Marie Kreutzer, Stéphane Brizé, Shinya Tsukamoto, Andrea Pallaoro, Lance Hammer, Isabelle Stever, and May el-Toukhy. The Danish director will compete in Valladolid with Woman Unknown, winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, in a selection that also brings together new works by some of the most recognisable filmmakers in contemporary cinema and leading names in international acting.
May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown is set in post-Second World War Denmark, at a time when society is attempting to settle scores with those who collaborated with the Germans. Marie, a young domestic worker played by Mathilde Arcel, is hiding an episode from her past that could jeopardise the future she is building for herself. The film, which also stars Carsten Bjørnlund and Thorbjørn Hedegaard, received not only the top prize but also the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and has been selected to represent Denmark at the Oscars.
Twenty-five years after Freedom, a film that played a decisive role in the revival of Argentine cinema at the turn of the century and established Lisandro Alonso as one of the most distinctive voices in international auteur cinema, the director revisits Misael – the forestry worker he had previously portrayed in that film – in Double Freedom. The character continues to work in solitude in the forests until the need to look after his sister completely disrupts the world he had built for himself, raising the question of what happens when the presence of another person forces one to share a life conceived in isolation.
Two events, geographically separate yet linked by their protagonists, form the backbone of Dao by Alain Gomis, a Franco-Senegalese filmmaker to whom the Centre Pompidou in Paris is currently dedicating a retrospective entitled ‘Alain Gomis. Histoires communes’. A wedding in France, celebrated by a family of African descent, and a funeral rite in Guinea-Bissau become two moments of reunion, celebration and farewell that allow us to piece together the stories of those who left and those who chose to stay. Gomis combines fictional characters with real people and testimonies drawn from the community itself. The director of Félicité, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 Berlinale, thus returns to feature-length fiction.
Great female performers: Seydoux, Deneuve, Rohrwacher, Binoche
A seemingly stable family forms the starting point for Gentle Monster, in which Marie Kreutzer (Corsage) explores the tensions that arise when the image built up around one of its members begins to crumble. Lucy, a pianist played by Léa Seydoux – winner of the Best Actress award at the 68th SEMINCI for The Beast – lives with her husband and son in a house in the countryside until the arrival of the police to investigate Philip reveals a side to his life that forces the protagonist to re-examine everything she thought she knew about him. Catherine Deneuve, Jella Haase and Laurence Rupp round out the cast.
The contradiction between corporate rhetoric on employee wellbeing and the demands of productivity lies at the heart of A Good Little Soldier by Stéphane Brizé (The Measure of a Man, A Woman’s Life). Carla, an executive promoted to head of Human Resources at a large insurance company, must reconcile these two positions until she uncovers a toxic management environment that makes it increasingly difficult to maintain both. Starring Alba Rohrwacher and Vincent Lindon, the film won the Best Screenplay award at Venice for Brizé, Coralie Amédéo and Olivier Gorce.
In Queen at Sea, Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall are faced with a particularly complex decision: who can make decisions for a person when dementia begins to rob them of that capacity? Directed by Lance Hammer, the film won the Silver Bear Jury Prize at Berlin, whilst Courtenay and Calder-Marshall shared the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Actor and Actress.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay
Desire and attraction give way to a relationship marked by dependency, drugs and the difficulty of breaking free in Andrea Pallaoro’s The Echo Chamber. Luca Marinelli, Alicia Vikander and Susan Sarandon star in this story about the dynamics of power within a couple, in which Leo and Anne become progressively trapped in a bond from which neither seems able to escape. The film is based on the final screenplay written by the legendary filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, alongside Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi, before his death in 2018.
Lives shaped by war
The autobiographical account of Allen Nelson, a former US Marine who returned from Vietnam scarred by having been trained to kill, forms the basis for Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? by Shinya Tsukamoto, a cult figure in Japanese cinema whose Tetsuo trilogy became an international benchmark for cyberpunk. Geoffrey Rush and Rodney Hicks star in this story that questions the machinery that turns a man into a soldier. The film won the Leoncino d’Oro at Venice, awarded by the Mostra’s youth jury.
The war in Ukraine shapes the relationship and identity of Olya and Oleh in Isabelle Stever’s I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, as one of their gender transitions coincides with the invasion and even comes to influence decisions about their own bodies. Written by Stever alongside Ukrainian screenwriter Anna Melikova, drawing on experiences from their own lives, the film thus sets a story of love and personal transformation against the backdrop of the choices imposed by armed conflict.
These titles complete the line-up of 22 films competing in the Official Selection at the 71st edition of SEMINCI. Alongside those now announced, the following films will be in the running for the Golden Spike: We Are All Strangers by Anthony Chen;Prosecution by Faraz Shariat; Yellow Letters by Ilker Çatak; Everytime by Sandra Wollner; Rose by Markus Schleinz; A Man of His Time by Emmanuel Marre; Aquí by Tiago Guedes; La Gradiva by Marine Atlan; The Fortunate Isles by Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado; Hermanas by Ione Hernández; A Bit of Light by Ali Asgari; The Violinist by Ervin Han and Raúl García; and My Notes on Mars by Lili Horvát.
- Woman Unknown, by May el-Toukhy
- La libertad doble, by Lisandro Alonso
- Dao, by Alain Gomis
- Un monstruo amable, by Marie Kreutzer
- A Good Little Soldier, by Stéphane Brizé
- Queen at Sea, by Lance Hammer
- The Echo Chamber, by Andrea Pallaoro
- Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?, by Shinya Tsukamoto
- I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, by Isabelle Stever