• Advance sales of individual tickets and the 10-Film Pass for the 71st SEMINCI will begin on 16 October, both online and at the box office

From 23 to 31 October, the Valladolid International Film Festival will present a programme of 208 films —71 short films and 137 feature films— including 121 premieres: 88 Spanish, 30 world premieres and three European premieres. Twenty-two feature films will compete for the Golden Spike in an edition that will open with My Notes on Mars by Lili Horvát, close with Hombre al agua by Gael García Bernal, and will centre its 71st edition on sound as a fundamental narrative and expressive tool in filmmaking. The Valladolid-born actress, director, screenwriter and writer Elvira Mínguez will receive one of the festival’s Honorary Spike, whilst the festival will also place special emphasis on music and the memory of José Luis Cienfuegos, director of SEMINCI between 2023 and 2025.

The Mayor of Valladolid, Jesús Julio Carnero; the Councillor for Tourism, Events and City Branding, Blanca Jiménez; and the co-directors of SEMINCI, Mariona Viader and Javier H. Estrada, presented the new edition of the festival today at the Town Hall, at an event which also brought together institutional representatives, sponsors, partners and the media.

Elvira Mínguez, Honorary Spike for a career spanning acting and filmmaking

The 71st SEMINCI will award the Honorary Spike to Elvira Mínguez (Valladolid, 1965), one of the most acclaimed actresses in Spanish cinema, whose career spans more than three decades of working with national and international filmmakers and who has also built a significant career as a writer and director.

Mínguez made her film debut in Imanol Uribe’s Días contados, a role for which she received her first Goya nomination for Best New Actress and the Ondas Award alongside Candela Peña and Ruth Gabriel. Since then, she has worked with directors such as John Malkovich, Steven Soderbergh, Paul McGuigan, Antonio Chavarrías and Asghar Farhadi. Among the awards she has received are the Goya for Best Supporting Actress for Tapas, two Silver Biznagas from the Málaga Film Festival and the Crystal Globe for Best Actress at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Her most recent achievements include the Actors’ Union Award for her performance in La cena by Manuel Gómez Pereira, and further nominations for the Goya and Feroz Awards. Alongside her work as an actress, Mínguez has been writing since 2006. Her short story Hace tiempo pasó un forastero was adapted for the screen and won an award at SEMINCI. In 2023, she published the novel La sombra de la tierra, the television adaptation of which she wrote and directed for Atresplayer, marking her directorial debut. Her second novel, La educación del monstruo, won the 30th Primavera Novel Prize. The Honorary Spike awarded to Elvira Mínguez joins the other honours already announced for this edition, including the award to be received by the Chilean filmmaker Valeria Sarmiento, who will present Behind the Rain out of competition in the Official Section – a film with which she has announced the end of her career – and the American sound engineer Willie D. Burton, production sound mixer on The Odyssey, an eight-time Oscar nominee and winner of two Oscars for Bird and Dreamgirls. The Academic Honourary Spike will be awarded to the Master’s in Creative Documentary at the UPF-Barcelona School of Management, an educational programme that has combined learning with filmmaking for almost three decades and has produced 42 feature-length documentaries.

Tickets on sale from Friday 16 October

Sales of individual tickets and the 10-Session Pass (35 euros, valid for all screenings except those at the Calderón Theatre) will begin online and at the box office on Friday 16 October at 11.00 am. The pass entitles the holder to ten tickets – either ten single tickets or five pairs – which can be validated online or in person.

Tickets will be on sale in person at Espacio SEMINCI on 16 and 17 October, from 11.00 to 20.00; at the Calderón Theatre, from 18 to 22 October, from 11.00 to 14.00 and from 17.00 to 20.00; and at the box offices of the Calderón Theatre and Broadway Cinemas during the festival, from 23 to 31 October, during their respective opening hours. As exceptions, the Calderón box office will be open on 23 and 31 October, coinciding with the opening and closing ceremonies, from 8.30 am to 4.00 pm, and the Broadway Cinemas box office will begin ticket sales on 23 October at 4.00 pm. Online ticket sales will remain open until the end of the festival.