➢ Six features and three short films, distributed in six screenings, will compete for this edition’s award
➢ The selection includes two titles that are among the winners of the Malaga Film Festival: 20,000 Species of Bees, Golden Biznaga for Best Spanish Film, and Aqueronte, Silver Biznaga for Best Documentary Short Film
➢ The complete catalog and schedule are available on the official website lpafilmfestival.com
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Saturday, April 15, 2023.- The Panorama Spain competition of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival begins this Sunday, April 16, with the feature films Notes on a Summer by Diego Llorente (Spain, 2023, 84 min.) and La mala familia (Spain, 2022, 81 min.) by Nacho A. Villar and Luis Rojo, as well as the short film La concha (Spain, 2022, 21 min.) by Leire Apellaniz.
Two of them, La concha and Notes on a Summer, will be screened together in a single session at 5:45 p.m. at Cinesa El Muelle Screen 6. In the former, the filmmaker from Bilbao tells the story of a distrustful single mother who is drifting through life after a breakup with her daughter’s father and subsequent financial bankruptcy, spends an ordinary afternoon at the beach with her friends and daughter June. Perhaps a shell and a little magic can break her apparent normality.
Notes on a Summer will be screened right after it, with an introduction by its director Diego Llorente. In his latest work, the Asturian filmmaker shows how Marta, like so many other young people who have come to Madrid from the province, in this case from her native Asturias, finds her soul and identity divided. The summer when she returns to Gijón may be the moment to choose between past and future, between her career and her identity, between the present love and the love she once had and perhaps could have again. The film has been screened at the Rotterdam Festival.
At 8:15 p.m., also at Cinesa El Muelle Screen 6, the audience will be able to see La mala familia and enjoy first-hand the impressions of its directors, Nacho A. Villar and Luis Rojo. Both filmmakers depict on the big screen how the release of Andresito, one of the kids of the La mala familia gang, from the correctional center where he resides, is a good reason for the group to get together again. On the banks of the San Juan swamp, they reflect on the past and a present haunted by doubts. The feature film arrives at the Film Festival after its screening in Seville and Rotterdam.
These three works will thus open Panorama Spain, a section of the Gran-Canarian event in which six feature films and three shorts will compete for the award of the section, which was born in 2022 and is endowed with 5,000 euros for the director.
The rest of the titles included in it are 20,000 Species of Bees by Estíbaliz Urresola Solaguren (Spain, 2023, 125 min.), Golden Biznaga for Best Feature Film at the Malaga Film Festival; To Books and Women I Sing by María Elorza (Spain, 2022, 72 min.); Alegrías riojanas by Velasco Broca (Spain, 2022, 28 min.); Inmotep by Julián Génisson (Spain, 2022, 65 min.); Aqueronte by Manuel Muñoz Rivas (Spain, 2023, 26 min.) Malaga’s Silver Biznaga for Best Documentary Short Film, and H by Carlos Pardo Ros (Spain, 2022, 67 min.).
These nine works selected by the programming department invite us to “disengage our gaze and abandon the regular path.” They will be evaluated by a jury made up of writer and journalist Elena Lazic, producer and filmmaker Magdalena Banasik, and programmer and acquisitions expert René Wolf.
The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival, organized by the Culture area of the Gran-Canarian capital’s City Council through Promoción de la Ciudad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, has received public assistance by the ICAA [Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts] and the program for the internationalization of Spanish culture, PICE Visitantes, of Acción Cultural Española (AC/E).
Among the Festival’s collaborators we may find Cinesa El Muelle, El Muelle Shopping Center, Hotel Cristina by Tigotan, the Elder Museum of Science and Technology or Casa África, places which also function as venues or hold activities of the film event; as well as other institutions and companies such as Sagulpa, Hospitales San Roque, Audiovisuales Canarias, Music Library & SFX or the International Bach Festival. Likewise, its market, MECAS, has been possible thanks to the sponsorship of the Gran Canaria Film Commission-Sociedad de Promoción Económica de Gran Canaria and the support of Canary Islands Film and Proexca.
The University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the Mid Atlantic University, the the CIFP Felo Monzón Grau-Bassas, the Canary Islands Film Institute, the Audiovisual Cluster of the Canary Islands, Digital 104, CIMA [Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media], the Asociación Microclima Cineastas de Canarias [Association of Filmmakers of the Canary Islands ‘Microclima’] and Tusity are also collaborators of the Festival.
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