Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s feature film won a total of nine awards, including Best Spanish Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
The film As Bestas is the big winner of the Goya ceremony, the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars, which also dedicated Saturday its main actor, the Frenchman Denis Ménochet, and paid tribute to the director Carlos Saura, who died the day before at 91 years old.
Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s feature film, shot with French actors Marina Foïs and Denis Ménochet, won a total of nine awards, including those for best Spanish film, best director and best original screenplay.
Its main actor Denis Ménochet, 46, won the prize for best actor. This is the most important award obtained to date by the French actor, who has worked with filmmakers François Ozon (peter von kant), Quentin Tarantino (Inglorious Basterds) and Ridley Scott (Robin Hood).
“I was lucky to have worked with actors that I admire so much”, reacted the actor in Spanish when receiving his award, before quoting Marina Foïs and “the best actor in the world” , Luis Zahera, awarded the Goya for Best Supporting Actor.
More than 700,000 spectators
The film by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, a rising star of Spanish cinema, tells the story of a couple who fall in love with a deprived corner of Galicia, in the north-west of Spain, whose installation arouses the threatening hostility of two neighboring brothers.
This feature film inspired by a true story has already been seen by 700,000 spectators. He had already caused a sensation in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was presented out of competition.
“What we liked was imagining the motivations” of the characters, “how can you hate someone in your neighborhood so much, and (the motivation) of the two strangers, people who are not welcome but say ‘I’m not going to leave here'”, explained the director to AFP in Cannes.
Tribute to Carlos Saura
The 37th edition of the Goyas was also an opportunity for the world of cinema to pay tribute to the Spanish director Carlos Saura, who died Friday at his home in the Madrid region, to be rewarded with an honorary Goya.
“The death of Carlos Saura has moved the whole profession” because “he was one of the most brilliant representatives of Spanish culture”, underlined the president of the Cinema Academy Fernando Méndez-Leite during the ceremony, which was held this year in Seville, in the south of Spain.
The Goya was given to the filmmaker’s two children and to his wife, actress Eulalia Ramón. The latter read a message prepared by Carlos Saura in person, thanking those who accompanied him “in this wonderful work of shooting a film”.
Born on January 4, 1932 in Huesca (Aragon, north), Carlos Saura has shot around fifty films, including cria cuervos in 1975, and received numerous awards during his career, including a Silver Bear in 1966 in Berlin for The hunt.
The filmmaker, who would normally have had to pick up his prize in person, is considered an essential figure in the history of Spanish cinema, along with Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodovar.
Juliette Binoche honored
The Goyas also paid tribute on Saturday evening to French actress Juliette Binoche, who received an international prize on Saturday evening for “her extraordinary career” in cinema.
Upon receiving her award, the actress sang the tune of Porque you goemblematic song of the film cria cuervos by Carlos Saura. The Spanish filmmaker “moved me terribly”, she assured, before saying in Spanish “happy” to receive this “wonderful prize”.
During her forty-year career, Juliette Binoche has acted in many films such as The Lovers on the Bridge Or The English Patientfor which she received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
