Keys to the Festival’s ninth and tenth days / April 17 and 18

 The Festival’s penultimate day includes the announcement of the awards and the screenings of the Official Section, Band à Part, Panorama, Magic Lantern and Special Session Film and Thought. On Sunday, the audience will have some of the titles that have been on the big screens these past ten days

 The Cinesa El Muelle Multiplex, the Edificio Miller and the Elder Museum of Science and Technology will host screenings, conferences and events related to the Film Festival

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Friday April 16, 2021. The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival will announce during its penultimate day this twentieth edition’s awards. This Saturday April 17 will also include the screenings of the short films that have competed in the Official Section’s first two sessions and of the feature films Goodbye Mister Wong and The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, in addition to Band à Part’s short films and feature Nemesis, Panorama’s 76 Days, Malmjkrog and February, filmmaker, screenwriter and actress Julie Delpy’s Before Midnight, the Special Session Film and Thought and Magic Lantern’s The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily

Special Session. Film and Thought (in collaboration with the Aula Manuel Alemán of the ULPGC) At 5 pm at Screen 6, screening of José Ángel Valente. Escribir lugar (España, 2021, 60 min.), by José Manuel Mouriño. With introduction by Mouriño, followed by a talk about the poet. The documentary delves into the figure of the writer José Ángel Valente. It does so through an essay in images that uses the poet’s original voice in dialogue with two transcendental spaces in his life and work: Ourense, his hometown and the matrix of his childhood memories in the post-war period, on the one hand, and the Almería of the Tabernas desert, on the other.

Official Section Feature Films. At 5 pm at Cinesa El Muelle’s Screen 4, second screening of Goodbye Mister Wong (France, Laos, 2020, 100 min.), by Kiyé Simon Luang, a title that captures the extraordinary beauty of this South-East Asian country and its colonial architecture while portraying its present time through a story based on a love dispute. France, a young woman who works by the shore of Lake Nam Ngum in Northern Laos, is desired by two totally contrasting men. Her path will cross that of Hugo, a Frenchman who has come there to look for his wife who left him a year earlier.

At 7 pm at Screen 3, third screening of The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet (Argentina, 2020, 73 min.) by Ana Katz. Sebastian is an ordinary man in his thirties, who is dedicated to his dog and who lives off a succession of temporary jobs. As he stumbles through adulthood and latches onto love whenever he can, the world is rocked by a sudden catastrophe that shakes his already precarious balance.

Official Section Short Films: Session 1. At 10 am, Cinesa El Muelle’s Screen 8 will bring to the big screen the first short film session that have competed in this section:  The Letter Room (Elvira Lind, USA, 2020, 30 min.), Bella (Thelyia Petraki, Greece, 2020, 24 min.), My Own Landscapes (Antoine Chapon, France, 2020, 18 min.) and Between You and Milagros (Mariana Saffon, Colombia, 2020, 20 min.).

Official Section Short Films: Session 2. At noon, Cinesa El Muelle’s Screen 8 will bring to the big screen the second short film session: Grigio. Terra bruciata (Burnt. Land of Fire) (Ben Donateo, Italy, 2020, 14 min.), Lemongrass Girl (Pom Bunsermvicha, Thailand, 2021, 17 min.), Hide (Daniel Gray, Canada, Hungary, France, 2020, 11 min.) and Catavento (Joao Rosas, Portugal, 2020, 40 min.).

Band à Part Feature Film. At 5:30 at Cinesa El Muelle’s Screen 5 it will be screened Nemesis (Switzerland, 2020, 131 min.), by Thomas Imbach. From the perspective of the filmmaker’s window, this film contemplates the demolition of a train station in Zurich and the subsequent construction of a prison and police station in its place.

Band à Part Short Films. The short films that have competed in this new section of the Festival will be screened at 7 pm at Screen 8. Heliconia (Paula Rodríguez Polanco, France, Colombia, 2020, 27 min.), Still Life (Carolina Astudillo, Spain, 2020, 6 min.), Os Olhos na Mata e o Gosto na Água (Luciana Mazeto, Vinícius Lopes, Brazil, 2020, 36 min.), Point and Line to Plane (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada, 2020, 17 min.) and Surviving You Always (Morgan Quaintance, United Kingdom, 18 min.).

Panorama. This section of the Festival offers this Saturday at 5 pm at Screen 3 76 Days (Weixi Chen, USA, 2020, 93 min), by Hao Wu. On 23 January 2020, China locked down Wuhan, a city of 11 million, to combat the emerging COVID-19 outbreak. Set deep inside the frontlines of the crisis in four hospitals, 76 DAYS recounts indelible human stories of healthcare workers and patients who struggle to survive the pandemic with resilience and dignity.

At 5 pm at Screen 9, first screening of Malmkrog (Romania, Serbia, Switzerland, Sweden, Macedonia, Bosnia Herzegovina, 2020, 200 min.), by Cristi Puiu. an aristocratic landowner, organizes a dinner in which no guest is accidental: a politician, a young countess or a general and his wife. There they discuss authority, progress, morality, death and the Antichrist, during an increasingly tense and heated debate in which anyone can become a victim of his own speech.

At 6 pm at Screen 7 it will be screened February (Bulgaria, France, 2020, 125 min.), by Kamen Kalev, a reflection on the absence of personality changes over time, taking the audience to a remote Bulgarian village.

Magic Lantern. At noon at Cinesa El Muelle’s Screen 8, second opportunity to watch Lorezo Mattotti’s The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily. According to the catalogue, the children of the house will be able to enjoy a story based on the tale of the same name by Dino Buzzati. The animated film invites us to think about concepts such as colonization, tyranny or cultural appropriation. This is undoubtedly an opportunity to travel through visual universes full of beauty, to get inside them and to reconsider some of today’s issues from a perspective that is magical and stimulating for the senses.

Julie Delpy. At 7:15 pm at Screen 4, it will be screened the French filmmaker, screenwriter and actress’ film Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, USA, 2013, 104 min.), Honor Award of this Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Film Festival’s 20th edition. With a virtual introduction by Julie Delpy to the film she cowrote and starred in.

 

Keys to Sunday

The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival closes its 20th edition rescreening some of the titles that have been shown at Cinesa El Muelle’s screens since last Friday April 9, when the city’s film festival started. During its last day, this Sunday April 18, the Festival will screen features and short films from the Official Section, Panorama, Panorama Spain, Band à Part, Magic Lantern and Asghar Farhadi and Julie Delpy’s sections.