French cinema is this year the true winner at Seville European Film Festival (SEFF), as France’s production companies are involved in the production of the eight main prizes at the Seville’s event which wrapped on Saturday.
Alice Diop’s first fiction feature Saint Omer adds Seville’s best feature award, the Golden Giraldillo to its brilliant career kicking off at Venice where it took the Silver Lion award.
The film has also been nomimated for France’s prestigiousLouis Delluc prize in both best feature and best debut categories and awarded best film at the Geneva Intenational Film Festival.
In Seville, the film, sold by Wild Bunch, also took prize for best screenplay for Diop, Amrita David and Marie Ndiaye.
The grand jury award went ex-aequo to Lukas Dhont’s rumination of childhood friendship Close which won a grand prix at Cannes, and João Pedro Rodrigues’ musical fantasy Will-O’-The-Wisp. Close‘s International sales are handled by The Match Factory and Rodrigues’ feature is sold by Films Boutique.
Italian Pietro Marcello took best director prize for Scarlet, his third fiction feature. Interestingly, both directors Diop and Marcello are filmmakers trained in the documentarian field.
The best actor award went to Eden Dambrine for Close and best actress was awarded to both Julie Ledru for Lola Quivoron’s Rodeo and Zar Amir Ebrahimi for her work in Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider.
A regular collaborator of Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Oliver Laxe (Fire Will Come),
Mauro Herce received the best cinematography award for Matadero, directed by Santiago Filloll.
The audience awards went to UK director Georgia Oakley’s debut Blue Jean and the Dardenne brothers’ Cannes title Tori and Lokita.
Spanish films
As for local fare, Carlos Pardo Ros’ H took the AC/E Award for the best Spanish film. The feature is a documentary exploring who was hidden behind the H initial, the only available resource to identify a man who was killed by a bull during the bull run of San Fermín in 1969. H has been received heartly by reviewers. It is the directorial debut of Pardo who is also a producer at Dvein Films with credits including María Antón Cabot’s Sóc Vertical Però M’agradaria Ser Horitzontal.
While attending the SEFF, Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona revealed he is working on a script based on Manuel Chaves Nogales’ A Sangre Y Fuego. Héroes, Bestias y Mártires de España (lliterally, ’By Fire and Sword. Heroes, Beasts and Martyrs of Spain’), a collection of nine stories depicting the merciless suffering of the Spanish Civil War. Bayona is co-writing the script alongside Agustín Díaz Yanes.
Bayona attended the Essential Voices sidebar which showcased public conversations with prominent European filmmakers, some of them competing in the official section with their latest titles. Tis was the case of Alexandr Sokurov with Fairytale, Signe Baumane with My Love Affair With Marriage and French animation master Michel Ocelot who hadThe Black Pharaoh, the Savage And The Princess in competition.
The SEFF hosted the 2nd MERCI Seville Independent Film Market, a programme running November 9-11 including screenings of European films by Spanish distributors for local exhibitors. It was organised with the Spanish ndependent distributors association ADICINE. The initiative aims mainly to connect Spanish distributors and exhibitors with European production, another pillar in the SEFF philosophy of strengthening bridges among independent European cinemas.
Adicine co-chairman Lara Pérez Camiña, alongside Enrique Costa told Screen attendees to the second annual event have notably increased from the previous first edition. This year MERCI granted an honorary prize to veteran distributor and exhibitor Juan José Daza
SEFF ran November 4-12.
Seville winners 2022
COMPETITION
Golden Giraldillo
Saint Omer (France) Dir. Alice Diop
Grand jury award (Ex aequo)
Close (Belgium, France, Netherlands) Dir. Lukas Dhont
Will-O’-The-Wisp (Portugal, France) Dir. João Pedro Rodrigues
Best director
Pietro Marcello, Scarlet (France, Italy)
Best actor
Eden Dambrine, Close
Best actress (ex-aequo)
Julie Ledru, Rodeo (France) and Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Holy Spider (Denmark, Germany, France, Sweden)
Best screenplay
Alice Diop, Amrita David and Marie Ndiaye, Saint Omer
Best editing
Géraldine Mangenot, Other People’s Children (France)
Best cinematography
Mauro Herce, Matadero (Argentina, Spain, France)
THE NEW WAVES
Best film
Aftersun (UK-US) Dir Charlotte Wells
Best non-fictionfilm
Journey to the Sun (Portugal) Dirs: Susana de Sousa Dias and Ansgar Schaefer
Special award
The Bride (Portugal) Dir. Sérgio Tréfaut
ENDLESS REVOLUTIONS
Best film
Afterwater (Germany, Spain, Serbia, South Korea) Dir. Dane Komlijen
Andulusian Panorama
Best film
Como Ardilla En El Agua (Spain) Dir. Mayte Gómez Molina and Mayte Molina Romero
Audience awards
Extraordinary stories audience award
Blue Jean (UK) Dir. Georgia Oakley
Grand audience award, EFA Selection
Tori and Lokita (Belgium) Dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
OTHER AWARDS
AC/E Award –best Spanish film
H (Spain) Dir. Carlos Pardo Ros
Best sirector, first or second European feature
Nikola Spasicc, Christina (Serbia)
Cinephiles of the future award
Rodeo, Lola Quivoron
Junior Europe Award
Las vacaciones de Yoko (Spain) Dir. Juanjo Elordi
ASECAN ward – Best dilm
Siete Jereles (Spain) Pedro G. Romero and Gonzalo García-Pelayo
Ocaña Award to Freedom
Skin Deep (Germany) Dir. Alex Schaad
Women in Focus award
Blue Jean
XV European Film Award ‘University of Seville’, Fiction
En Recuerdo De Lupi (Spain) Dir. Silvia Mares García
XV European Film Award, University of Seville, non-fiction
Erosión (Spain) Dir. Jesús Minchón Rodicio
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