The Lanzarote International Film Festival (FICL) said goodbye this Saturday, May 13, to its twenty-third edition at a closing gala held at the Víctor Fernández Gopar "El Salinero" theater in Arrecife, in which the awards were presented to the winners in the five official categories in competition: International Fiction Shorts, National Fiction Shorts, Animation Shorts, Documentary Shorts, and Canary Shorts. In this edition, 2,152 applications from 90 nationalities have been received.
As is tradition, the actor and comedian from Lanzarote, Nacho Peña, and the audiovisual creator Emilio González hosted a gala full of humor and surprises, in which the winning shorts in their respective sections were screened and the awards were presented. This year, the jury of the official section was composed of the filmmakers Fernando Colomo, Pilar Palomero, Álvaro Cervantes, Marina Seresesky, Santiago Alverú, Ricardo Gómez, and Gladys Balaguer, as well as the artists, professors, and cultural managers Saúl Rojas, Moisés Fleitas, Lana Corujo, Cintia Machín, María José Alcantara, Gonzalo Cruz, María José Sánchez, and Esther Fernández.
The last night of the Festival began with a performance by the Marius John Band, a band formed by rock “outsiders and soundtrack lovers” that includes drummer Julio Santana; Daniel Hudson, on electric guitar; Juanjo Mora, on bass and acoustic guitar; and Marius John, on piano. The band was joined by the young Canarian violinist Álvaro Castro González, who combines his studies at Violonissimo with a scholarship at the Philharmonic Academy of Gran Canaria.
‘My Holocaust, Filomena Franz”. Best Documentary Short
The awards ceremony began with the category of Best Documentary Short, which went to "My Holocaust, Philomena Franz", by David Navarro. The testimony of this woman who fights for the recognition of the genocide of the Romani people and who survived the Nazi Holocaust in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp captivated the jury formed by Pilar Palomero, María José Alcántara, and Moisés Fleitas.
The filmmaker assured that he was “speechless” for having become the winner of the category and shared with the public what that interview with Philomena, who recently passed away at the age of one hundred, was like. The audience award in this category went to ‘Barefoot Empress’, by Vikas Khanna, the exciting learning adventure of an elderly woman also almost a hundred years old.
‘Hjemmekontor’, Best Animated Short
The Norwegians Endre Lund Eriksen and Daniel Damm won the award for Best Animated Short with their film "Hjemmekontor" (The Home Office), which narrates the difficult family coexistence of parents and children during the pandemic. The jury of the Animation section, composed of Santi Alverú, Lana Corujo, and Esther Fernández, recognized in the winning short film the treatment “with realism and poetry” of the reality that was experienced during the pandemic. The director of the film sent a video thanking for the award.
The public, through their votes after the daily screenings at the CIC El Almacén, opted in this category for the film ‘Slouch’, by Michael Bohnenstingl, a story about the demands of family life and the desires for success of a young rocker.
‘Visionado’, Best Canary Short
The jury of the Canary Shorts category, composed of Marina Seresesky, Gladys Balaguer, and Gonzalo Cruz, awarded "Visionado", by director Manuel Román in co-authorship with Eli Herrera. The involuntary viewing of a crime in a recording leads to an unexpected ending. The jury underlined “the riskiness” of a work “with the appearance of simplicity”, an opinion shared by the creators of this short with thriller overtones, which has already achieved many recognitions.
The FICL audience chose in this section the proposal by Pedro Ayose and José Martret ‘Confecciones Saavedra’, which has elevated the unique Juana Saavedra, from San Bartolomé, to the category of star in festivals around the world.
‘Mesa para 3’, Best National Fiction Short
Fernando Colomo, María José Sánchez, and Cintia Machín make up the jury that decided to award "Mesa para 3", by Álvaro G. Company and Meka Ribera, the award for Best National Fiction Short. The film is set in a dinner at an exclusive restaurant, which not all members of a group of friends will have the opportunity to enjoy. The Audience Award went, in this category, to "Actos por partes", a heartwarming story not without humor, based on the experience as an oncological patient of the film's own director, Sergio Milán.
The jury also made two special mentions to the short films "Actos por partes" and "Sacrilegio", by Pedro Casablanc. Fernando Colomo indicated that, given the level of all the works, “you always keep something from each one”. The film director assured that currently Spanish cinema “is the first in the world”.
‘Murder tongue’, Best International Fiction Short
Director Ali Sohail Jaura won the award in the International Shorts section with his film "Murder tongue". The jury, composed of Álvaro Cervantes, Ricardo Gómez, and Saúl Rojas, opted for this short film set in 1992, during the riots in Karachi (Pakistan), when a father goes to visit his son at the hospital, injured in the revolts against the Urdu community. The members of the jury highlighted the “narrative rhythm of a short film that brings us closer to a conflict that we may not know much about”.
The other winning film of the section was "The stupid boy", by Phil Dunn, which won the Audience Award with a story about diversity and white supremacism.
With the awards ceremony, the FICL closes its twenty-third edition, where the industry's respect for the consolidated Lanzarote Festival, a qualifying event for the Goya Awards, has been confirmed. The focus is now on the next edition of the most anticipated meeting with short films.
