Atlàntida closes its record edition with a tribute to Alexandre Desplat and the triumph of ‘Lionel’

French composer Alexandre Desplat (Paris, 1961), an essential figure in film music and winner of two Oscars for The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape of Water , last night put the finishing touch on the 16th edition of the Atlàntida Mallorca Film Fest, the most attended in the history of the festival, with 53,500 spectators. The musician received the Masters of Cinema award from Queen Letizia, who presided over the ceremony. This award recognizes the career of great names in the seventh art, during a gala marked by the humid warmth of the Mallorcan night in the Renaissance courtyard of La Misericòrdia. Hours earlier, Desplat gave a masterclass in which he showed his creative process based on his collaborations with filmmakers such as Wes Anderson, Guillermo del Toro, and Jacques Audiard.

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The grand prize of the Official Section went to Lionel , the feature film debut of Murcian Carlos Saiz. The film, which will arrive in theaters on September 11, is a road movie situated between fiction and documentary, as its protagonists (father and son in real life) play themselves. The story follows a young man who, upon discovering that he will lose the orphan’s pension he has lived on since his mother’s death, embarks on a journey from Murcia to France with an absent father. “Lionel has been my friend for twelve years,” explained the director during his time at the festival. “While studying film, we were asked to write the plot of a movie, and just then he made that trip with his father. It was a real odyssey, and that exercise ended up becoming Lionel .” The film came to Atlàntida after receiving a special jury mention at Seminci and the most popular actor award at the Beijing International Film Festival and the Transilvania Trophy for best film.

The rest of the awards reflected the diversity of perspectives that characterize the festival. Mala bèstia , the debut feature by Bàrbara Farré, won the Dama Agustí Villaronga Award for best national film thanks to a disturbing story about a teenager who, after growing up in a boarding school, is taken in by a family, although the fear of abandonment ends up triggering a spiral of violence.

The Trends section distinguished Blue Film , by British director Elliot Tuttle, a thriller starring a young sex worker who agrees to spend the night with an anonymous client, not imagining that the encounter will confront him with a dark episode from his past. In the Balearic competition, La carn , by Joan Porcel, was recognized as best feature film, while La barraca , by Júlia Castaño, won the award for best short film. The audience award went to the documentary El ciclo del amo r , by Oscar-winning Orlando von Einsiedel, which tells the true story of an Indian artist who traveled 10,000 kilometers by bicycle between Delhi and Stockholm to reunite with the Swedish tourist he had fallen in love with.

After the gala, the festival said goodbye with the screening of El ser querido , the film by Rodrigo Sorogoyen presented this year in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival. The director attended accompanied by much of the cast and creative team, including Javier Bardem, Victoria Luengo, Raúl Arévalo, Melina Matthews, screenwriter Isabel Peña, and producers Eduardo Villanueva and Nacho Lavilla. “I know the film reaches, moves, and shocks,” Bardem said, convinced of the impact it will have when it arrives in Spanish cinemas on August 26.

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The ceremony was preceded by a concert by Mallorcan singer Júlia Colom. Among the guests were also Gael García Bernal, Fernando Trueba, Carlos Bardem, Zoe Stein, Esty Quesada, Jaume Anglada, and the general director of the Liceu of Barcelona, Valentí Oviedo.

The 16th edition of the Atlàntida Mallorca Film Fest, organized by the Filmin platform, was held from July 24 to August 2 with a week of in-person activities in Mallorca and a month of online programming on the platform. The festival closed with record figures since, in addition to the already mentioned 53,500 spectators, a historic maximum of accreditations was reached, with more than 500 professionals, and a total of 160 films from 22 nationalities were programmed between its in-person and online editions.

“This has been the edition of the big leap forward,” summarized the festival director, Jaume Ripoll. “The duty of a festival is to be relevant to the industry and the audience, and this year we say goodbye with the feeling of a goal achieved.”