The Film Academy announced this Thursday the three Spanish films that start the race towards the Oscar. Los domingos, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa; El ser querido, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and La bola negra, by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, are the three preselected films for the major film awards given in Hollywood. Pedro Almodóvar, who released Amarga Navidad this year, was left out.
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At the Film Academy headquarters in Madrid, and after the presentation by its president, Fernando Méndez-Leite (“may the one you all want win,” he concluded), the announcement was made by Miriam Garlo, the first deaf actress to win a Goya for Best New Actress, precisely for the film Sorda, by Eva Libertad.
Los domingos, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, and the big winner at the last Goya edition, tells the story of a young woman who feels a religious vocation and decides to become a nun, which causes a family crisis and a confrontation with her aunt. The film stars Blanca Soroa and Patricia López Arnaiz.
“We are not about playing expectations. You accompany the films like children during the school year. It has been a very special journey. The debate went beyond the cinematic and everything the film has brought us we have experienced with great emotion,” declared Ruiz de Azúa from the stage of the Film Academy auditorium, who won the Golden Shell in San Sebastián and feels very “flattered” by the journey since then of Los domingos, “a proposal that now seems very solid, but a year ago, during editing, seemed crazier.”
La bola negra, which has not yet been released in cinemas, won the Best Direction award at the Cannes festival. In this film, Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, the Javis, delve into the Lorca universe through the last work started by the great poet from Granada before his murder at the beginning of the Civil War, exploring the lives of three homosexual men at three different moments.
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From their hotel in Los Angeles, and almost in pajamas because it was two in the morning there, the Javis showed enthusiasm and, after thanking the academy members for their preselection, sent a message of support to Almodóvar for the “great film” Amarga Navidad. “It will stay with us for a long time,” assured Ambrossi despite the Manchego director’s film being left out of the shortlist. “We would love to represent Spain, we would give it our all and it excites us a lot,” exclaimed the co-director.
In El ser querido, director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who was also at the French festival, dramatizes the reunion between a man, played by Javier Bardem who has been acclaimed by critics for this work, and his daughter, played by Victoria Luengo. Like Almodóvar’s story, it is also a meta-cinematic story, where Bardem’s character is a famous director and Luengo’s character is an actress who cannot find the path to success.
From Barcelona, where he is promoting his film, Sorogoyen said he is enjoying the “sweet moment” he is living with El ser querido, a film that “is doing well at the box office” and with which he hopes to reach Los Angeles. “They will continue to be intense, expectant days,” supported the producer Eduardo Villanueva from Madrid, for whom “being on this shortlist always helps bring the film closer to the audience.”
Thus, after passing through Cannes, the films by Sorogoyen and the Javis now start the uncertain race to Los Angeles alongside Los domingos, champion in San Sebastián and the last Goyas. Which one will reach the finish line?
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