The 22nd Lanzarote International Film Festival (FICL), which will be held from June 13 to 25, is preparing a tribute from his native island to the screenwriter and film director Roberto Pérez Toledo, who passed away on January 31 in Madrid. The work of the Lanzarote native as a filmmaker and director of actors and actresses has been widely recognized in the Spanish film industry and since his death he has received tributes and awards at the Malaga and Benidorm Festivals.
Within the FICL program, a place of honor has been reserved to remember the figure of Roberto Pérez Toledo and the mark he leaves on the seventh art. The express short film contest will now bear the director's name and the first screening in the Canary Islands of his latest feature film, "Places We've Never Been," will also take place. In addition, several professionals who were part of Roberto Pérez Toledo's team will travel to Lanzarote to participate in the various scheduled activities.
Express Shorts 'Roberto Pérez Toledo'
The popular FICL short film contest, which is in its fourth edition, now bears the name of Roberto Pérez Toledo and will be presented on Monday, June 13, at the CIC El Almacén, at 8:00 p.m. At the event, participants will be informed of the rules of the contest and the theme chosen this year. The awards to the winners will be presented on Sunday, June 19, at a gala in the Atlántida theater hall in Arrecife, where the short films submitted to the contest will be screened.
The jury for this contest is made up of different professionals who have worked with Pérez Toledo: the radio and television communicator and journalist Borja Terán, who participated in Los Gritones, Los amigos raros or El amor mola; the actor and director Edgar Córcoles, Roberto's partner, who has worked in different television series and films and is one of the protagonists of the short film shot in Lanzarote Antes de la erupción; and the award-winning producer Rafael Álvarez (two Goyas), who produced several of the Lanzarote filmmaker's works.
'Places We've Never Been'
The last feature film shot by the Lanzarote filmmaker will be screened for the first time in the Canary Islands, as a tribute, on Friday, June 17, at 9:00 p.m. at the Multicines Atlántida. Admission is priced at 3 euros. The film won the award for best Spanish film in the ZonaCine section of the Malaga Film Festival and two of its protagonists, Pepe Ocio and Sergio Torrico, received the award for best male performance.
Places We've Never Been tells five stories of couples. Roberto himself said of it: "It is a film with which I advance in my exploration of human relationships and affections, putting the magnifying glass this time on the generation of those of us who have already turned forty. The common denominator of the stories is that they talk about how complex it is to fully enter adulthood, about what we leave behind to achieve certain goals, about all those places we longed to go, but have ended up not looking too much like how we dreamed they would be. This film proposes an experience in the form of a journey of expectations, disappointment, death and emotional rebirth to demonstrate that always, at any time, we are in time to start again."
Retrospective and talk
The other date with Roberto Pérez Toledo's cinema at the FICL will be during the screening of a selection of his short films, on Saturday, June 18, at 9:00 p.m., at the CIC El Almacén. The price of admission is 1 euro. The filmmaker became internationally known for his short films, a genre that allowed him to "let off steam" more frequently than feature films.
His filmography includes 80 short films, including viral phenomena such as Los gritones, Globos or Chico especial. The retrospective will screen Antes de la erupción, one of Roberto's last short films, shot in Lanzarote, which tells the story of a trans girl's vacation with her childhood friends on the Island. Pérez Toledo said he wanted Lanzarote to be "another character" in the film.
The three members of the Roberto Pérez Toledo contest jury and the actor Carlos Soroa, who played the role of Lucho in the play Manual básico de lengua de signos para romper corazones, Roberto Pérez Toledo's first theatrical foray, which premiered in January in Madrid, will be present, after the screenings, in a discussion debate with the public. They themselves have organized the activity in which they will talk about "the trajectory and influences in Roberto's work, as well as the evolution of the representation of disability in his work."
Tickets for all Festival shows can be purchased soon on the Festival website, Cultura Lanzarote and Ecoentradas.
The 22nd Lanzarote International Film Festival is organized by the Culture Area of the Cabildo de Lanzarote and Fisme Producciones; sponsored by Canary Islands Film, Instituto Canario de Desarrollo Cultural, Government of the Canary Islands, Art, Culture and Tourism Centers of Lanzarote, Arrecife City Council and Construcciones Lafrugan; and collaborated by Arrecife Gran Hotel, CICAR and Radio Televisión Canaria.