➢ Ten feature films, two of them as a diptych, are competing for this 22nd edition’s Golden Lady Harimaguada
➢ All of them will have three screenings, many of which will include presentations and discussions with the filmmakers
➢ Both the catalog and the schedule are available on the official website lpafilmfestival.com
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Sunday, April 16, 2023.- The Official Feature Films Section of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival will start tomorrow, April 17, with Sophie Letourneur’s Voyages en Italie (France, 2023, 91 min.), which will be screened at 9:30 a.m. at Cinesa El Muelle Screen 9. A little later, at 12:15 p.m., the same space will host the screening of The Adults (United States, 2023, 91 min.), by Dustin Guy Defa. A total of ten films are competing for the Golden Lady Harimaguada of this twenty-second edition of the festival. All are Spanish premieres, two of which are competing as a diptych. They will each have three screenings, which in some cases will include presentations and discussions with the filmmakers.
This is precisely the case of Voyages en Italie, a work that depicts how a married couple tries to rekindle their love in a romantic getaway that will take them to Sicily. An odd and realistic comedy full of action and challenges, pleasures and conflicts that begin with the choice of the destination itself: the country where he has been with all his ex-partners. Letourneur herself, who is also the female lead of this feature film that has already been screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, will introduce her latest work and talk about it with François Labarthe.
The Adults will be screened on Monday as well. Dustin Guy Defa’s work, which comes to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria after premiering at the Berlinale, portrays the internal debate Eric faces after returning, for a brief period, to his hometown. There he will have to choose between recovering his lost relationship with his sisters or falling back into poker addiction with a group of old friends.
Tomorrow, these two works will open the feature film competition of the Official Section, which will continue on Tuesday 18 with the found-footage film Silent Witnesses (Colombia, France, 2023, 78 min.), a posthumous work by Luis Ospina co-directed by Jerónimo Atehortúa Arteaga, who will introduce the piece and talk with the audience at the second screening. Also on this day it will take place the screening of The Klezmer Project, by Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann (Austria, Argentina, 2023, 117 min.).
On Wednesday 19 it will be the turn of Living Bad (Portugal, France, 2023, 125 min.) and Bad Living (Portugal, France, 127 min.). Both films by João Canijo are competing together as a single work in the form of a diptych.
Scheduled for Thursday is About Thirty (Argentina, 2023, 92 min.), by Martín Shanly. The filmmaker, who also stars in the film, will introduce the screening and talk with the audience. Jow Zhi Wei, director of Tomorrow is a Long Time (Singapore, Taiwan, France, Portugal, 2023, 106 min.) will do the same with his piece.
Finally, on Friday, April 21, The Bride (Rwanda, 2023, 73 min.), by Myriam U. Birara, and Copenhagen Does Not Exist (Denmark, 2023, 98 min.), by Martin Skovbjerg, will be the last two feature films screening within the Official Section. Both filmmakers will be there to introduce their works and talk about them with the audience.
On Saturday, April 22, the Festival will announce the winners of the section. The result will mark Sunday 23’s screenings, when the audience will be able to enjoy a new and final session of the awarded films.
Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, author of the Golden Bear winner and Oscar-nominated On Body and Soul, as well as of My 20th Century, one of the 12 Best Hungarian Films of All Time and selected among the 10 Best Films of the Year by The New York Times; Gerwin Tamsma, film curator and programmer at Rotterdam for over 25 years, and Fatou Jupiter Touré, one of the most impactful Africans according to the Tropics magazine, actress, director, producer, United Nations ambassador, entrepreneur, founder of the Les Téranga Film Festival since 2019, and President of WIFT Senegal (Women in Film and Television), are the members of the jury in charge of granting the Official Feature Films Section’s awards. The selected titles will be competing this week for a Golden Lady Harimaguada endowed with 20,000 euros and a Silver Lady Harimaguada with 10,000.
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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