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The 2024 edition of the Valladolid International Film Week, also known as Seminci, wrapped on Saturday (October 26), giving its top award, the Golden Spike, to Misericordia by Alain Guiraudie.

Misericordia tells the story of a man who returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker, and decides to stay for a few days with the man’s widow, getting involved in a series of unexpected events.

Guiraudie also won the best screenplay award.

The members of the Valladolid jury, Greek director Sofía Exarchou; Spanish actress Aida Folch; American critic Devika Girish; Spanish filmmaker Luis López Carrasco...

The Spanish Film Institute (Icaa) has honored filmmaker, screenwriter and theater director Josefina Molina with this year’s National Cinematography Prize.

A pioneering female director who began her career in the largely male-dominated world of Spanish cinema in the 1960s, Molina has directed such works as 1973’s “Vera, un cuento cruel”, the 1978 TV series “El Camino” (“The Road”) and the 1989 feature “Esquilache.”

The award – given to a figure in any part of Spain’s film industry, not just cinematographers – marks the first time that the prize has been presented to a female director in its near 40-year history.

In selecting Molina as this year’s recipient, the Icaa jury said it was correcting a historical debt in honoring the filmmaker, who it described as a “model for several generations of present and future filmmakers.”

In 1969, Molina became the first woman to earn a degree in directing and producing from the...

Richard Linklater’s 12-year project beats Ida, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Winter Sleep.

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has been named the best film of the past year by the members of the International Federation of Film Critics, Fipresci.

The poll for the Fipresci Grand Prix 2014 - Best Film of the Year gathered votes from 553 members throughout the world.

In the first phase, participants nominated feature-length films that received their world premiere no earlier than July 1, 2013. This led to a final round between the four finalists: Boyhood by Richard Linklater, Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski, The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson, and Winter Sleep by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

This is the first Linklater has won the prize, which has previously gone to Michael Haneke, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jafar Panahi, Pedro Almodóvar, Jean-Luc Godard and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, among others, since its establishment in 1999.

Boyhood will have a special screening at the San Sebastián Film Festival on Sept...

Fernando Guillén dies: Pedro Almodóvar Collaborator, Goya Award winner for Don Juan in Hell Fernando Guillén, a Spanish acting legend whose film, stage, and television career spanned close to six decades, died of cancer earlier today at a Madrid hospital. The Barcelona-born Guillén was 81 according to the daily El Mundo. (As per the IMDb, he was 80; born on Nov. 22, 1932.) Curiously, Fernando Guillén became more active in Spanish cinema in the last three decades. Among his movies are three directed by Pedro Almodóvar: Law of the Desire (1987), in which Guillén plays the police investigator; the Academy Award-nominated Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), as Carmen Maura’s jerk ex-boyfriend; and the Oscar-winning All About My Mother (1999), as the Doctor featured in the play A Streetcar Named Desire starring Marisa Paredes as Blanche DuBois. (Correction: Penélope Cruz’s father is played by Fernando Fernán Gómez.) [Photo: Fernando Guillén.] Other Guillén movies include...

Reviewed by Bryan Buss

(January 2011)

Directed/Written by: Sebastián Cordero, based on the novel by Sergio Bizzio

Starring: Gustavo Sánchez Parra, Martina García, Concha Velasco, Xavier Elorriaga, Alex Brendemühl and Icíar Bollaín

A South American immigrant construction worker living in Spain, José María (Gustavo Sánchez Parra) has an anger problem. He’s not respected, he can’t get a leg up in the world, and he’s broke. The only good thing in his life is his sweet and beautiful Colombian girlfriend, Rosa (Martina García), who works as a maid for the wealthy Torreses (Xavier Elorriaga and the incomparable Concha Velasco). She’s out of his league, and he knows it, and everyone else knows it, which makes him insanely jealous and insecure.

All he wants is a simple life with Rosa, but his rage threatens to deny him even that because his jealousy and defensiveness often get out of...

Reviewed by Bryan Buss

(January 2011)

Directed/Written by: Sebastián Cordero, based on the novel by Sergio Bizzio

Starring: Gustavo Sánchez Parra, Martina García, Concha Velasco, Xavier Elorriaga, Alex Brendemühl and Icíar Bollaín

A South American immigrant construction worker living in Spain, José María (Gustavo Sánchez Parra) has an anger problem. He’s not respected, he can’t get a leg up in the world, and he’s broke. The only good thing in his life is his sweet and beautiful Colombian girlfriend, Rosa (Martina García), who works as a maid for the wealthy Torreses (Xavier Elorriaga and the incomparable Concha Velasco). She’s out of his league, and he knows it, and everyone else knows it, which makes him insanely jealous and insecure.

All he wants is a simple life with Rosa, but his rage threatens to deny him even that because his jealousy and defensiveness often get out of...

Regardless of what Elisabeth Hasselbeck intends to do when she's old and lonely, The Golden Girls proved that even straight women of a certain age can have a good time when they form a chosen family.

Now Spanish audiences will get their own version of the Girls with Las Chicas de Oro, produced by Disney Media Networks and Latin World Entertainment.

This certainly isn't the first time the classic TV show has been adapted for other countries, but this version is notable for its stars, who happen to be some of the biggest names in Spanish entertainment: Concha Velasco, Carmen Maura, Lola Herrera and Alicia Hermida.

Velasco has been on screen since 1954, primarily as a character actress. Her breakthrough role was St. Teresa of Avila in the series, Teresa de Jesus, but she is probably more recognizable as Carmen Orozco Argenta in the Spanish drama Herederos. She plays Doroti — and...

MALAGA -- Strong ticket sales and vibrant word-of-mouth marked the 11th annual Malaga Spanish Film Festival as it hit its half-way mark Tuesday.

The event has become the country's main showcase for homegrown talent and commands a robust following from locals that fill theaters and congregate outside hotels eager to glimpse the mix of young Spanish sex symbols and veteran actors on hand.

In the span of the first four days, the event awarded lifetime achievement prizes to seasoned actress Concha Velasco and casting director Luis San Narciso. San Narciso's presence is particularly symbolic given the fact that he found the first TV roles for many of the best-known faces now on the big screen at the festival.

Javier Camara, Lola Duenas and Fernando Tejero, who co-star in Nacho Garcia Velilla's directorial debut, "Chef's Selection", represent a wave of television stars who have made the crossover to film successfully in Spain. "Chef"'s had audiences belly-laughing over the difficulties of a homosexual chef's efforts to mesh his paternity with his love life.

TLA Releasing

NEW YORK -- Chronicling the romantic misadventures of a disparate group of characters who all have occasion to meet at "kilometer zero," a central point in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, this Spanish comedy-drama resembles a cross between the work of Robert Altman and early Pedro Almodovar. While lacking the depth or cohesiveness that would make it truly memorable, "Km. 0" is a reasonably entertaining, well-acted effort that demonstrates talent on the part of its co-screenwriters/directors Yolanda Garcia Serrano and Juan Luis Iborra.

As usual with these episodic sorts of films, some of the characters and situations are more interesting than others. These include the scenarios involving Pedro (Carlos Fuentes), a young would-be filmmaker who becomes unwittingly involved with an aging prostitute (Elisa Matilla) past her prime; the liaison between an upper-class, middle-aged woman (Concha Velasco) and a male prostitute that turns traumatic when she realizes (mistakenly) that he's the son she long ago gave up for adoption; and the accidental encounter between a sexy flamenco dancer (Victor Ullate Jr.) and the shy man (Miguel Garcia) he mistakes for his Internet blind date.

Less entertaining, and rather more disturbing, are the episodes involving a would-be actress (Merce Pons) who threatens to blackmail a famous director (George Corraface) after he hits her with his car, and the bizarre romance that develops between a seemingly unhinged policeman (Roberto Alamo) and a beautiful, perennial robbery victim (Silke).

The film's themes of miscommunication and mistaken identity don't ultimately have much resonance, and the pacing tends to flag toward the end, but the better episodes balance emotion and often farcical humor with reasonable effectiveness. The performances by the highly attractive cast are terrific all around, and the directors have well managed to convey the literally and metaphorically sultry aspects of a hot Summer Day.