Blog del Instituto Cervantes de Londres

The Galician Film Forum (GFF) will celebrate its 11th event, titled ‘Shorts Edition’, with a programme focused on Galician short films that have been released recently. The event will take place on Friday 22 November at King’s College London [19 h, Edmond J Safra Theatre, Strand Campus, WC2R 2LS]. The films that have been selected for the event are ‘A nena azul’ by Sandra Sánchez, ‘Marusía’ by Pedro Sancho, ‘Soy una tumba’ by Khris Cembe, ‘Limbo’ by Daniel Viqueira and ‘Beautiful Boy’ by Fran X. Rodríguez. After the screening, the audience will have the opportunity to speak with director and film editor Sandra Sánchez, who will be in London to participate in this event.

As is usual, all of the films will be screened in Galician with subtitles in English and the event will take place in English and Galician. Tickets are free, but it is essential to reserve them in advance at this link. The eleventh edition of the GFF has been made possible thanks to support from the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at King’s College London, sponsorship from ABANCA and collaboration from the Office for Cultural & Scientific Affairs at the Spanish Embassy in London.

This Shorts Edition will bring a range of recent Galician short films to London. With fiction as the main thread running through the selection of films, the audience will have the opportunity to watch films that are full of humour like “Beautiful Boy” and “Marusia”. There will also be space for poetic reflection, as in “A nena azul”, and even some short films which are quite unconventional for this genre in Galicia, like animation and terror, with “Soy una tumba” and “Limbo” standing as good examples.

Award-winning short films

As well as having been released recently, the films that will be screened at the Galician Film Forum share in having had significant success at film festivals. In this regard, the successes of ‘Limbo’ must be underlined. ‘Limbo’ has participated in more than a hundred festivals and has received twenty prizes to date, including best short film at Grimmfest Manchester’s Festival of Fantastic Films; best director at Cryptshow Festival; the Calaverita de Bronce at the Morbido Film Fest; the Young Jury award at the Festival Ibérico de Cinema, Best Short Film at Terroríficamente Cortos and the award for Scariest Film at the Desmond District Demons, amongst others.

The success of ‘Soy una tumba’ also deserves a special mention since, as well as having been nominated for Best animated short film at the Goya awards this year, it continues to win awards as it goes around different festivals. Some of these awards include Best Animated Short at the XVII Premios Mestre Mateo; Best Animated Short at the Festival de Cortometrajes La Fila de Valladolid; Best National Short Film at Cortoons Gandia 2019; Best National Short Film and Best Animated Short Film at the Festival Nacional de Ciudad de Ávila Ávilacine; Best Script at Anima Deba Animazio Zinemaldia; first prize at Ourense Film Festival; and best animated short film at the XX Festival de Cortometrajes Asier Errasti, to cite just a few.

‘A nena azul’ lands in London having won the Special Mention prize from the jury at Planeta GZ and the Premio award for best directing Gallega XV at the Curtocircuito International Film Festival (Santiago de Compostela); the Mestre Mateo award for Best Short Film at the XVII edition of this ceremony which is organised by the Galician Audiovisual Academy. It has also won prizes for Best Photography and Best Sound at the VI National Festival of Short Films in Talavera de la Reina (Madrid).

With regards to ‘Beautiful Boy’, it has been recognised on several occasions, winning the audience prize for example at the XVI Festival de Cans and Primavera do Cine. It has also received awards like the prize for Best Script at the Mostra de Curtas Vila de Noia. To close, ‘Marusía’, the most recent of the short films that the Galician Film Forum will be screening, won its first international award at the 8^th Resistencia Film Festival de Chile and won, in October, the Audience Award for Best Galician Short Film at the XLI Semana del Cine de Lugo.

Atlantic Gaze

The guest of honour at this edition of the Galician Film Forum is the director and producer Sandra Sánchez. In 2011 she presented her most personal project, a documentary called “Tralas luces”, which took four years to make and was premiered in the section for new directors at the Festival de San Sebastián. Sánchez then continued working as a producer on a variety of series, documentaries and films like ‘Migas de pan’, ‘Esquece Monelos’, ‘Querida Gina’ and ‘Rafael’. She also directed the short films ‘Matías’, which appeared at Chanfaina Lab, and ‘A nena azul’.

Sandra Sánchez is currently working in the Laboratory for Audiovisual Production at the Scientific Museums of A Coruña and she is writing the script for what will be her first feature-length fiction film, ‘La nadadora’, a project intimately linked to ‘A nena azul’ because both films have the same protagonist.

Galician Film Forum

The GFF started in 2015 when a group of Galicians living in London came together to create a space for Galician cinema in the British capital. It functions in three different ways: as an exhibition platform, as an observatory for the new creative audiovisual diaspora in the UK and as a space for reflecting on Galician cinema and culture in universal terms.

• Tickets: https://gffshortsedition.eventbrite.co.uk
• A nena azul: http://anenaazul.com/
• Limbo: https://www.facebook.com/curtametraxelimbo
• Soy una tumba: https://www.facebook.com/soyunatumba/
• Marusía: https://www.facebook.com/contarteproduce/
• Beautiful Boy: https://www.nenobonito.info/