- The section includes Minotaur by Andrei Sviyagintsev, winner of the Cannes Grand Prix and selected by France to represent the country at the Oscars
- Also on show will be Josephine by Beth de Araújo, a double award-winner at Sundance; Club Kid, Jordan Firstman’s debut film presented in the Un Certain Regard section; and The Man I Love by Ira Sachs, which competed for the Palme d’Or
The 71st edition of the Valladolid International Film Festival (SEMINCI) brings together, in the ‘Constellations’ section, four films that have stood out on the international festival circuit in 2026. As a non-competitive section, it offers the chance to discover films in Valladolid that have garnered some of the season’s most prestigious accolades. Established filmmakers such as Andrei Sviyagintsev and Ira Sachs feature in this selection alongside two emerging voices in American cinema, Beth de Araújo and Jordan Firstman.
Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Minotaur follows a businessman whose life begins to fall apart when the crisis in his marriage coincides with a climate of growing instability and violence. Andrei Svjagintsev draws on a story loosely inspired by Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife to explore contemporary Russia through the prism of war and individual responsibility. The director of Elena, Leviathan and Loveless – winner of the Golden Lion at Venice and the Jury Prize at Cannes – returns to feature-length filmmaking nine years on with a film shot in Latvia and selected by France for the Oscars.
In Josephine, an eight-year-old girl accidentally witnesses a crime in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. From that moment on, she begins to experience the world around her through a new lens dominated by fear. Beth de Araújo places the viewer alongside her protagonist to explore the scars left by violence and the difficulty of regaining a sense of lost security. Josephine, the director’s second film following Soft & Quiet, had its world premiere at Sundance, where it received the Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award.
With Club Kid, Jordan Firstman makes his feature film debut with a story set against the backdrop of New York’s nightlife. The film follows a party promoter whose life is turned upside down when a ten-year-old boy turns up claiming to be his son. Starring Firstman himself alongside Cara Delevingne and Diego Calva, it weaves together club culture, queer identity and fatherhood through a story of personal transformation. Presented in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, it marks the transition to feature films for a filmmaker with a background in comedy and digital culture, who has worked as a screenwriter, actor and director of short films and has appeared in films such as Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun.
Set in New York in the late 1980s, The Man I Love centres on Jimmy George, an artist from the Downtown theatre and performance scene, played by Rami Malek. Whilst battling a life-threatening illness, he remains devoted to desire, love and creativity. Ira Sachs, director of films such as Keep the Lights On, Love Is Strange and Passages, is one of the most acclaimed contemporary American filmmakers for his portrayal of romantic relationships and the queer experience. In The Man I Love, he revisits moments from that artistic scene—marked by the AIDS epidemic—to pay tribute to a generation and celebrate life in the face of death.
- Club Kid, de Jordan Firstman
- Josephine, de Beth de Araújo
- Minotauro, de Andréi Sviáguintsev
- The Man I Love, de Ira Sachs