The rural drama As Bestas has become the big winner of the Goyas, the most important Spanish film awards, in Seville. Director Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s thriller won a total of nine awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Screenplay. The feature film takes the true story of the murder of a Dutch organic farmer as its starting point.
In 2010, German Martin Verfondern, a naturalized Dutch citizen, disappeared near the Galician hamlet of Santoalla, in northwestern Spain. His body was found by accident only years later. Verfondern is said to have been shot dead by the neighbour’s son after a raging conflict about the proceeds of logging near the village. As Bestas tells a similar story, only it concerns a French couple and the arrival of a wind farm is the source of the neighborly conflict.
In the film, protagonist Antoine and his wife Olga, who together grow organic tomatoes for the local market, become involved in a grim neighbor dispute after moving house. Their neighbours, two ranchers, cannot accept that Antoine has voted against the arrival of lucrative windmills. The intimidating bullying escalates and eventually leads to Antoine’s death.
Also individual As Bestas awarded during the Goyas. In addition to the French actor Denis Ménochet, who won best leading actor, his Spanish colleague Luis Zahera received the award for best supporting actor. The film has already attracted more than 700,000 spectators and was already well received at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it was presented out of competition. In 2016, the disappearance of the Dutch farmer was already the subject of the documentary Santoalla, which was shown at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
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