With María Arnal’s rendition of “Black Infinity”, a song that the Catalan artist composed for “Polvo Sera”, the climax – and almost the climax – of the show arrived this evening. opening gala of the Valladolid International Film Week. However, there were several moments where music and emotions enveloped the event with which the festival organized yesterday, in just over an hour, the official opening of the 69th edition.
“Seminci is the festival for those of us who deeply love cinema, for those of us who go to see a film that we would not see anywhere else,” said journalist and writer Mara Torres, presenter of the gala. . the beginning of his speech. referred also to the new song which will serve as a header for the projections, composed by Javier Vielba from Valladolid, and a renovated logo that “stung” many “semanistas” although it was intended as “an update of the iconic kiss that made you fall in love with Seminci”.
Precisely, the new design has taken up a simple and bright decor, through which, basically, the protagonists of the first day of the festival passed, among them, the team of the series ‘The New Year’, with Rodrigo Sorogoyen at the helm . : “It’s a pleasure to be at the opening day of such an important festival”, declared the penultimate Goya with ‘As bestas’, and gave way to the protagonists of his latest production, which hours before, he had defined as “the greatest work” of those he has produced so far. Actors Francesco Carril and Iria del Río did not hide their nervousness, as did Sorogoyen himself. that she blushed when Mara Torres told her that Juliette Binoche She recently admitted in an interview that she would love to work with him.
This is how the first minutes of a gala unfolded, revealing a preview of the more than two hundred films that the festival will program over the coming days. A little over a week during which, as the presenter recalled, separate cycles will take place dedicated to Germany as a guest country and to the filmmaker Nathan Silver, “little known in Spain but with years of experience in the search for the real America, the one that doesn’t appear in Hollywood.
“Welcome to the planet Seminci,” said Mara Torres to give way to the aforementioned director, who recognized his enthusiasm for being in a city so closely linked to Miguel de Cervantes, “key” in his formation.
After Silver, the most moving moment of the evening arrived, when the filmmaker, writer and current director of the Spanish Cinema Academy, Fernando Méndez-Leite, appeared on stage to collect one of the three ears of honor that the festival will present. . in this edition (the others will be received by the Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and, posthumously, the director Patricia Ferreira).
“We were fortunate to grow up not only surrounded by his love, but nourished by a remarkable source of wisdom and art,” said his daughter Clara. Producer Gerardo Herrero also had nice words for “the first person” who helped him enter this world “over 40 years ago.” “Spanish cinema is better thanks to him,” he added of the winner, who entered the stage preceded by loud applause and a standing audience. “Actually, this Spike You give it to me as a virgin because I spent half my life here in Valladolid” and “I love it,” he joked, remembering his connection with the festival for 56 years and with the Chair of Cinema at the University of Valladolid.
After the emotional moment and before the finale, led by the team of “Polvo estar”, the inaugural film, came the performance of María Arnal, who performed “for the first and only time” on stage the main theme of the film. of this production, accompanied by Ariadna Montfort and the recent winner of the National Dance Award. Lorena Nogal, from the La Veronal company, also present in the production of the Catalan director Carlos Marqués-Marce, who, a few hours earlier, had musically qualified this work as “a film about the condition of death and the unconditionality of life”. ‘love”. “
If music was a fundamental element of the event, it was not the same on the carpet – this blue year -, where the ambient melody could barely be heard, muffled by the whistles and shouts of the demonstrators concentrated there, among them those who protested against the conflict between Hamas and Israel, which attracted the support of some guests who joined us with badges and stickers, including musician Nacho Vegas.
