While the Awards season continued in Los Angeles with Christopher Nolan winning the Best Director trophies at the DGA for his work in “Oppenheimer” across the sea and landing in Valladolid, Spain, the 38th Edition of the Goya Awards, the equivalent on that European country of the Oscars, experienced the cinematic power of the Academy Award nominee for Best International Film, J.A. Bayona’s “The Society of Snow” sweeping its competition as it won 12 out of 13 nominations achieved including Best Picture of 2023. The uplifting but also very moving recreation of the 1972 plane crash at the Andes where the survivors in order to live are forced to resort to extreme measures to survive, made director Bayona break his own previous records in the same Awards where his film debut “The Orphanage” (2007) and his international hits “The impossible” (2012) and “A Monster Calls” (2016), had won many important Goyas but none of them the one for Best Picture of the Year. Previous GOYAS winners, the “Society” make-up team won big as well showing the amazing chronological deterioration of the characters throughout the film by Ana Lopez-Puigcerver, David Martí and Montse Ribe. Quick note, David and Montse won the Academy Award for the memorable Makeup of Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan Labyrinth” (2006), also a Spanish production, and this year all three of them are nominated for an Academy Award for “Society,” make-up.
Director Pedro Almodovar and actress Penelope Cruz at this years GOYAS.
This year’s Goya ceremony was surrounded by many scandals on their film industry starting from many allegations of sexual abuse by a producer against actresses who stand up in solidarity at the stage and finishing with filmmaker Pedro Almodovar taking a stance with his cast of “All About my Mother” turning 25 this year and announcing “The Society of the Snow” as Best Picture, against a member of the Spanish Government criticizing the endorsement for film production alleging that it took away the taxes of its citizens when, in fact, Almodovar declared “… we give back with more earnings, and we can prove that.”
Sigourney Weaver accepted in person Spain’s International Goya Award, to large applause. “Your country has produced so many masterpieces…”
Still, the Goyas remained as the big party for Spanish cinema, honoring also some of the creators of Film around the world but also contributed with their talent to make bonds with its industry, and that’s how actress Sigourney Weaver got the International Honorary Goya from Bayona for their collaboration in the mentioned “A Monster Calls” but also for the work of the three time Academy Award nominated actress in Spain since the 90s when she played Queen Isabel in Ridley Scott’s “1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992) and exiled filmmaker Roman Polanski’s “Death and the Maiden” (1995), among others.
The Eternal Memory, directed by Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi, was named Best IberoAmerican Film at the Goya Awards.
But back to Spanish speaking cinema, Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, who worked with Almodovar in the 2004 controversial “Bad Education” was present to announce the Best Iberoamerican Film to Maite Alberti for “The Eternal Memory”, from Chile, which is also nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar, her second nod after 2020’s “The Mole Agent”. Ironically, the Goya for Best Feature Documentary was won by Venezuelan filmmaker Claudia Pinto’s “Mientras seas tu”, surrounding just like “The Etetnal Memory” a protagonist which suffers from Alzheimer, in this case Spanish actress Carme Elías, on a ceremony empowering with their films issues disability, women and diversity in general including a double win for Best Animated Feature and Best Adapted Screenplay (the only category “The Society of the Snow” lost) for Pablo Berber’s “Robot Dreams”, also nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Viva el cine español!
Alfredo Galindo is un Productor, Director y Guinista de cine. Columnista del periódico Vanguardia desde 1995, escribe sobre música, cine y televisión. Combina la pasión de escribir con la creación cinematográfica.