It was the only possible Golden Shell. Tender loving care, which will surely be the last work of the British filmmaker Mike Leigh, has won the award for best film at the San Sebastian Festival. It is a recognition that should not be interpreted only as a tribute to a great director in his farewell to cinema due to health problems –he suffers from myositis, which weakens the musculature and hinders movement– that have prevented him from collecting the award in person. On the contrary, this minimalist film about two social workers and the parents of one of them is extraordinary and deeply humanistic, one of the best works by an author who is a champion of cinematic realism and who, for more than five decades, has dedicated himself to portraying life in all its painful complexity and beauty.

What an exciting and deeply humanistic film has been released the British Mike Leigh to the official competition of the San Sebastian Festival. Tender loving care is one of the best works by the director of Secrets and lies (1996), a portrait of two women and the parents of one of them whom Leigh shows in all their imperfect beauty, without condescension or idealizations. In previous films such as Naked (1993)and Hard truths (2024) this has resulted in rawness and harshness, but in this case, tenderness dominates. Like another of the great titles of this season, Suddenly(Suddenly, in the original French), by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tender loving care is above all a film about the importance of taking care of each other, but also about the limits of this love.