• The eleven works competing for the Richard Leacock Award, whose screening is scheduled for April 26, show how prolific Canarian filmmaking currently is, with enough room for experienced and new authors to coexist in it
• Marta Torrecilla, Arima León, Pedro García, Fátima Luzardo, Marcos Crisostomos and María Abenia’s short films make up the section’s first group of screenings, while Miguel G. Morales, Chisco Valdés, David Pantaleón, Amos Milbor and Antonia San Juan’s second group will close the section
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Tuesday, April 22, 2025.- Universal conflicts only approachable through intimacy, an illuminating memory of history, an alternative look at the territory undermining current mainstream discourse and a good deal of acid and sharp humor. The short film selection comprising the Canarias Cinema section of the 2025 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival proves, above all, that the islands’ filmmaking is quite alive, and beats with a present-day drive. In this section, experienced directors coexist with new emerging ones who are driven by their calling, formation and boldness, thus continuing the festival’s tradition. That is, a space that consistently incorporates new filmmakers to the national film circuit, as the authors themselves have noted.
Indeed, if Canarias Cinema has been known for anything, it is for standing as an essential platform for Canarian cinema, and for being a source of new filmmakers. Experienced and upcoming directors alike make up this diverse and appealing section: eleven short films that’ll compete for the Richard Leacock Award, as well as the distribution award granted by the Canarian production company Digital 104.
First group
Canarias Cinema’s first short film group will be screened on Saturday, April 26, at 10 a.m. at Cine Yelmo Las Arenas Screen 6. At 5 p.m., at the same screen, it will be shown for a second and last time, on this occasion with some of the filmmakers themselves in attendance.
The works comprising this group are: De interés insular (Of Island Interest) (Marta Torrecilla, Spain, 2024, 4 min.); Koyas (Arima León, Spain, 2025, 16 min.); El grito de César del bosque (The Shout of César del Bosque) (Pedro García, Spain, 2025, 25 min.); Tour (Fátima Luzardo, Spain, 2024, 2 min.); Dime, Mari (Tell Me, Mari) (Marcos Crisostomo, Spain, 2025, 18 min.), and Las sirenas (Mermaids) (María Abenia, Spain, 2024, 20 min.).
Second group
Canarias Cinema’s second short film group is also scheduled for Saturday, April 26, at 12:15 p.m. at Cine Yelmo Las Arenas Screen 6. Its second and final screening will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the same screen. Once again, some of the filmmakers themselves will be in attendance.
The pieces that make up this group are: Escuchar la sombra (Listen to the Shadow) (Miguel G. Morales, Spain, 2024, 30 min.); It Was Hot That Day: A Jandiman Story (Chisco Valdés, Spain, 2024, 11 min.); Cartas desde el Zoo (Letters From the Zoo) (David Pantaleón, Spain, 2024, 26 min.); Inmaculada (Inmaculate) (Amos Milbor, Spain, 2025, 14 min.), and La paciente desconocida de Freud (Freud’s Unknown Patient) (Antonia San Juan, Spain, 2025, 7 min.).
De interés insular / Of Island Interest
De interés insular is a piece shot at La Palma’s last Festivalito, whose premise consists of finishing a work in a limited amount of time while following a given theme. Its filmmaker, Marta Torrecilla, won the Jury Award for Most Outstanding Short Film in an edition built around the motto “How bad we are, but, hey, how much fun we’re having.” Afterwards, Torrecilla obtained the Best Short Film Award at Lanzarote’s Muestra de Cine. Both of them prove that her work, coming now to the Gran-Canarian film event, is deserving of the audience’s full attention.
In this short piece, the director delivers a strong, purely visual message on the Barlovento Lagoon. “Creating something in such a short time was a challenge for me,” she explains. “But I did a little research and was attracted by the subject of water. Looking at La Palma-related topics, because I was interested in the context. The truth is that I’ve never been at the Lagoon, which I think was a positive thing for the short film, because I used aerial maps instead. I think that, for the time we were there, it was fine. Then, of course, I found out about the news.” And through them, the purpose of a work that depicts the environment’s desiccation in contrast with the tourism industry.
Torrecilla admits that, regarding her short film’s impact, “it’s been surprise after surprise, although the awards have also allowed me to trust a little bit more in my own criteria.” “I’d keep on making works dealing with these issues, because they worry me,” the filmmaker explains, just before stressing “the special excitement” she feels about her Canarias Cinema selection. “The Festival,” she points out, “has helped me discover films and shape my gaze. I’ve learned to make the things I make thanks to that kind of cinema that teaches but cannot be seen in commercial theaters. And that’s becoming increasingly difficult.”
Koyas
Arima León creates in Koyas an urban drama, as contemporary as harsh, that she conceived years ago when she taught at the Canary Islands Film Institute. In fact, the script was born from one of her acting exercises. “However, Paula Ojeda and Andrea Cabret’s skill, two of my students back then, made me think that with them I could tell something else,” the director herself recalls. She found in both actresses the perfect evocation of those “girls-women I came across as a teenager, who had an overwhelming strength and who, holding onto reggaeton and bras tightened to the retina, were capable of surviving everything their social class threw at them.”
The filmmaker used her own experiences taking the bus as inspiration for the story, when she heard during a trip “a conversation between two young girls who considered themselves absolutely empowered and, at the same time, because of what they were saying, it seemed to me they were working as prostitutes. When they got off the bus and I saw their girl-like bodies, I shivered, and it has stuck with me forever.”
León reveals how she had to overcome certain difficulties during the shooting: a scene in constant movement on the bus, or the final moment in a small room, where heat was causing havoc. The director was grateful for the previous work of her cinematographer, Lucía Grimaldi, and her costume designer, Daniel Hernández, that allowed her to bring her short film to fruition.
For León, “the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival is not only a reference for its programming line, but also for having remained the film lung of the Gran-Canarian capital for decades.” The filmmaker points out that “being able to premiere this short film in the island where it was made is a gift in itself.” “Sharing Canarias Cinema,” she adds, “with filmmakers I admire such as Chisco Valdés, David Pantaleón, Miguel G. Morales, María Abenia or Antonia San Juan means a lot to me, too.”
El grito de César del Bosque / The Shout of César del Bosque
In the Gran-Canarian field and ravine landscapes between San Lorenzo and La Milagrosa, Pedro García tells a story sparing in words, but very intense in emotion. The director returns to the Festival, after his last participation with Már de Mármara (2016), with El grito de César del Bosque, in which he develops an initial idea he had “when David Delgado—his cinematographer—took me to the place. I immediately fell in love with it.”
The short film, which participated in the 2023 script contest of Asociación de Cine Vértigo, stars Rafael Navarro Miñón (who has been a regular participant of the Canarias Cinema’s short film section for the past few years) and Nayra Ortega. “Both showed a very good disposition to participate in it,” the director explains. In this work he approaches “what the place and a person’s retirement suggests,” that is, “that relationship we have with the world, sometimes wanting to be part of it and sometimes a little bit retired from it.”
García, a declared admirer of Iranian cinema, is especially grateful for Delgado’s collaboration, “one of the best cinematographers you can find,” as well as for that of musician Paco García Cruz. And the help he received from “Virginia Saavedra, Catalina Castro and Gloria Pérez, classmates from my Italian workshop.” In addition to the third most important member of the cast, Maxi the dog, and its owner, Vicky. “Sometimes this section and life embrace each other,” the filmmaker notes before explaining that the dog “which was the most interesting actor,” passed away barely a month ago at 14 years of age.
For the director, “participating in my city’s festival is a pleasure and a responsibility. It’s always interesting to measure oneself and your colleagues.” “Now,” he finishes, “the short film must continue by itself, the son was born beautiful, healthy and lovely, and I’m very proud of having filmed it and having gone through the experience.” He does, however, point to a second story, “a sequel,” which is in the middle of production.
Tour
Tour, by Fátima Luzardo, is a two-minute spark appealing to the audience’s ability to be moved. “A small, unpretentious dart,” the director herself explains, being certain that “art must do something for the world, provide some food for thought.”
Luzardo notes that “I don’t know how to classify my short film, as non-fiction, a false documentary, I don’t know.” In any case, “what I wanted was to cause that feeling of estrangement” in the audience. A Canarias Cinema regular, the director has been present in the section since 2021, and is particularly remembered by her Todo el mundo habla de Javier (2022, Audience Award at Visionaria). On this occasion, she decided to impose herself “a time limit, in order to find some incentive and see what I could do. That forces you to attempt to communicate what cannot be done with words, but with a certain abstract touch.”
Tour shows a contradiction between what appears onscreen and what the audience hears. “I was thinking about Soviet filmmakers, in the orchestral counterpoint, when they used sounds that had nothing to do with what was seen,” Luzardo points out, in a attempt to provide food for thought with her work. She even admits that “I’m still shocked by some of the images.”
Once again in the Festival, the director continues to appreciate “a lot” her work being selected in a film event she considers “a reference.”
Dime, Mari / Tell Me, Mari
Carlos Crisostomo debuts at the Festival with Dime, Mari. The filmmaker from Tenerife, a film student in Barcelona, tells a full story from the same point of view: a truck driver’s cabin. “I was inspired by a video I saw in YouTube about a truck driver’s day-to-day life. Something I had never thought about whenever I saw a truck on the road. The subject stuck in my head,” Crisostomo recalls. He spent “months” maturing his idea, until he found “the most complicated thing,” that is, “the story. I had the message, but I needed a situation that captured it.”
The director acknowledges that using a fixed shot from the same point that shows different landscapes and scenes turned out to be a perfect way of depicting the passage of time on screen effectively. Before that, he “was writing for a month. Shooting it was the easy part. First the actors’ voices and then the images.” He managed to finish his short film sticking to the maxim of independent cinema: “asking as many favors as possible and spending as little of my savings as possible, too.”
Regarding his Festival selection, Crisostomos says he is “very excited about it, it’s the first festival where I present one of my works.”
Las sirenas / Mermaids
María Abenia returns to the Gran-Canarian festival with Las sirenas after debuting with Circe (2022) and participating with Sísifo (2023). Las sirenas, she says, “was meant to be a film essay, with the association Mamachana. And suddenly this piece came out.”
“I’m very happy about the result,” Abenia points out. The work was born from a workshop in Tegueste (Tenerife) that offered a reflection on the identity of women in the rural environment and that took shape thanks to its participants. The filmmaker, who is also a programmer, included in her short film AI-built elements that give it a personality of its own. “Before working with them, the night before, I decided to see what I could do with AI. I was a little bit naughty and made them sit through those images,” she explains.
The filmmaker co-authored the script with these women, “because it was their choice the way I was going to film her, in the puddles.” “Then,” she adds, “the mythological part occurred to me as well, which is something I’ve been working on for quite some time.”
Abenia, who was a member of a jury in the Gran-Canarian Festival in 2024, says she is “delighted” with her new Canarias Cinema selection. “Also, because I’m accompanied by people I admire a lot. And, besides, some women are coming and we’re going to be together there. The Festival is a tradition. I feel very loved and cared for here.”
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