The first film that Stephen Frears (Leicester, 1941) saw in the cinema, when he was very small, was Walt Disney's Pinocchio. “When the whale swallowed him they had to take me out of the cinema, it scared me a lot”, recalls the director of Dangerous Liaisons and The Queen, one of the great masters of British cinema. A versatile director with a sense of humor and a genuine interest in people and their stories, Frears receives this Friday in Manresa the Honorary Award of the Clam, the International Social Film Festival of Catalonia, where on Saturday he will offer a masterclass conducted by Àlex Gorina. Frears' visit is the highlight of a festival that will screen until November 1st essential films of the season such as the Palme d'Or Fjord, by Cristian Mungiu, or The debut, by Jesse Eisenberg.