A historic milestone for Catalan cinema: 'Sirat' wins the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival

Special Envoy to the Cannes Film FestivalCatalan production Sirado, directed by Galician Oliver Laxe, has made history at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won one of the most important awards in the list, the Jury Prize, ex aequo with Sound of falling, by German director Mascha Schilinski. Cannes is a talisman for Laxe, who has presented all four of his films at the festival, always in different sections and always winning awards. Laxe's film, a road movie across the Sahara in which Sergi López is a father who searches for radish in radish His missing daughter, is a work that combines the ability of cinema to surprise and shock the viewer and a deeper and more reflective spiritual dimension.

Sirado It has been one of the films that has provoked the most extreme reactions this year, ranging from hatred to enthusiasm, although the international press has generally received it with very positive reviews. However, the Pilgrimage by Carla Simón He hasn't picked up a single award from the list of winners. Upon collecting his prize, Laxe recalled an anecdote from years ago, when he met a Palestinian taxi driver at the Jerusalem Film Festival with whom he discussed the possibility that they both had Jewish origins. "He told me something I haven't forgotten: that they made us from different tribes so that we would recognize each other, so that we would come closer to each other," said the director, who, with the feature, championed international film festivals. "Long live difference, long live cultures, and long live the Cannes Film Festival!" he exclaimed.

The Palme d'Or went to Iranian director Jafar Panahi for A simple accident, a magnificent thriller A moral in which a former political prisoner of the Islamic regime one day recognizes the particularly cruel interrogator who tortured him in prison. As Panahi himself has stated, it is a film marked by the director's time in prison, where he spent seven months in 2023. It is a story of revenge but also of forgiveness and humanity.

The award given to Panahi should also be read as a vindication of the struggle to express oneself as a filmmaker. The Iranian director has been persecuted for the past 15 years by the Islamic regime in his country: Panahi is prohibited from writing or directing films, and has been imprisoned and tortured for his activism in support of other persecuted filmmakers. A simple accident It is the first film he has presented in person in the last 15 years, during which he has not stopped making films, such as Tehran Taxi, which won the Golden Bear at Berlin and which the director was unable to collect. Panahi, by the way, has completed the perfect hat trick at major festivals: he has the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the Golden Bear at Berlin, and the Golden Lion at Venice (The circle, from the year 2000).

One of the most awarded films of the list of winners has been the magnificent The secret agent, a Brazilian film that won the award for best director for Kleber Mendonça Filho and the award for best actor for its lead actor, Wagner Moura, who plays an engineer on the run in Brazil in the 1970s. The other big winner in the list of awards is the Norwegian Sentimental value, Joachim Trier's drama about a veteran director who wants to make a film with his actress daughter, with whom he has a stormy relationship. Starring Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård, it's a complex and sensitive family drama with a sensational final half-hour.

The Dardenne brothers, who always win awards in the Cannes competition, were also present. This year's award went to Best Screenplay for the thrilling Young women, about a shelter for teenage mothers. The award for best actress went to the lead actress in the French film The last little girl, Nadia Melliti, who plays a teenager from a French family of Algerian origin who lives with pain and shame about her homosexuality. The jury also awarded a special prize to the Chinese actress. Resurrection, by Bi Gan, one of the undisputed masterpieces of this edition, a total celebration of cinema and the most radical film of the festival.

From 'Viridiana' to 'Sirat'

There is almost no precedent for awards for Catalan cinema at the Cannes Film Festival., except, of course, from the Palme d'Or in 1961 to the Viridiana by Luis Buñuel, produced by Pere Portabella (ex aequo with A long absence by Henri Colpi). In 2010, a film with 10% Catalan participation (through Lluís Miñarro's production company), the Thai film Uncle Boonmee remembers his previous lives, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Sirado, on the other hand, has nearly 60% Catalan capital and a predominantly Catalan artistic team, starting with the lead actor, Sergi López; the director of photography, Mauro Herce; the producer, Oriol Maymó; and the co-writer, Santi Fillol (born in Argentina but based in Barcelona, ​​​​where he teaches at Pompeu Fabra University). In fact, it was at that same center that Oliver Laxe, who speaks perfect Catalan, completed his degree in audiovisual communication.

In the Spanish context, the milestone of Sirado It is also historic: from the Jury Prize to The sun of the elbow (1991), by Víctor Erice, the only awards for Spanish productions had been for films by Pedro Almodóvar. In fact, the La Mancha-born producer, El Deseo, is also involved in the production of Sirado, a key factor in the competition opening its doors to Laxe's film.