As every year, the 62nd Gijón/ Xixón International Film Festival will have its Special Screenings Section, which will bring some of the most eagerly awaited contemporary auteur films to the public.
The prestigious filmmaker Albert Serra returns to FICX to present Tardes de soledad (Spain, France, Portugal), one of the most daring works of his career to date. Endowed with an overwhelming audiovisual calligraphy, the director offers a multifaceted and never before seen cinematographic approach to bullfighting that was unanimously awarded Best Film by the International Jury of the recently concluded edition of the San Sebastian Festival, which described the film as ‘a cinematographic work of art that will endure as an inescapable document’. In addition to the top prize in the Official Selection, the film received the Ateneo Guipuzcoano Award and the Feroz Zinemaldia Award in San Sebastian.
Serra, who has won the Golden Leopard at Locarno, the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize at Cannes, the Jean Vigo Prize and two nominations for the French Academy’s César Awards, among other international awards, has been present at the Gijón festival on several occasions. The filmmaker, who in 2023 presented the Award of Honour in Gijón to the French director of photography Agnès Godard and a year earlier presented Pacifiction at FICX, returns in 2024 with his latest work together with the producer Montse Triola.
Tardes de soledad by Albert Serra
In addition to the already announced Eight Postcards from Utopia, which competes in the Albar Official Selection, the Festival will feature the Spanish premiere of another film directed by Radu Jude in its Special Screenings. Sleep #2 (Romania), whose title explicitly refers to Andy Warhol’s film Sleep, focuses for a year on the grave of the pop-art icon. The film, avant-garde and deeply moving, had its premiere at the last Locarno Film Festival.
Sleep #2 by Radu Jude
Pablo Hernando, a Basque filmmaker gifted with an extraordinary sense for creating suspenseful atmospheres, and to whom the Festival dedicated a spotlight in 2016, directs and edits his second solo feature film, Una ballena (Spain, Italy). The film, which will premiere soon at the Sitges Festival, is a powerful neo-noir fantasy thriller starring Ingrid García-Jonsson (the filmmaker’s favourite actress) and veteran Ramón Barea, who will accompany Pablo Hernando in Gijón to present his latest and most ambitious feature film as part of the FICX Special Passes.
Also after its participation in the Official Selection of the Sitges Festival, the debut feature by Enrique Buleo, a unique filmmaker whose dazzling short films previously screened at the FICX, will arrive in Gijón. Paranormal rituals and apparitions of spectres in a small village in La Mancha come together in Bodegón con fantasmas (Spain, Serbia), a black comedy with choral protagonism sponsored by Alejandra Mora’s production company together with Juan Cavestany’s production company, Cuidado con el perro, Sideral and the Serbian This and That.
The Navarrese filmmaker Andrea Jaurrieta will visit Gijón to present a Special Screening of the film Nina (Spain), winner of the Special Jury Critics’ Prize at the last Malaga Festival. With her second feature film, Jaurrieta makes a vibrant contemporary western starring Patricia López Arnaiz (actress recently awarded the Silver Shell at San Sebastian), accompanied in the cast by Dario Grandinetti. The brilliant director of Ana de día returns to the Gijón festival after participating as a member of the International Jury at the 55th FICX and presenting her short film Ballenas aplastadas por el hielo (Whales Crushed by Ice) at the last edition.
Nina de Andrea Jaurrieta
The Asturian director Antonio R. Cabal presents the film Sahara. Fin de viaje (Spain). The film focuses on a young European couple, reckless and unprepared, who in the 1970s go into the desert in an all-terrain vehicle in search of adventure and are forced to face extreme situations. The film has the peculiarity of being based on the discarding of the original negative of an earlier work by the filmmaker, Sahara, released in 1985 and co-starring Maru Valdivielso.
Sahara. Fin de viaje by Antonio R. Cabal
In addition to these films, which will form part of the FICX Special Passes, there are the already announced final cinematographic works by the master Jean-Luc Godard, Scénarios and Exposé du film annonce du film ‘Scénario’ (France), whose Spanish premieres will take place in Gijón and which will be presented by their producer, Mitra Farahani, a close collaborator of Godard’s last period, and also curator of the complementary exhibition that can also be enjoyed in Gijón.
