The film displays a constant succession of images that are overwhelming due to their violence, or their kinetic muscle, or their poetry, or their sadness, or their dreamlike charge, or their hallucinogenic power, or their symbolic connotations, or several of those qualities. at once
Often the film that ends up becoming the winner of a film festival is not the one that obtains the highest praise from the jury, but the one that ends up making the fewest enemies among its members. In other words: the candidates who generate consensus among the judges, and that is especially so when among them there are no personalities or well-defined authorities. The group in charge of judging the films that have participated in the 70th edition of the San Sebastian Festival fits perfectly into that profile -the actress Glenn Close was going to preside over it, but his resignation a few days before the start of the competition left him without leaders-, and this is possibly one of the reasons why the second feature film by the Colombian Laura Mora has risen tonight with the Golden Shell.
And surely another reason, more important, is that ‘The Kings of the world’ it’s a great movie. Take a tried-and-true narrative archetype – a group of characters venture into the jungle in search of their own version of The Goldenand after overcoming very hard obstacles they understand that the promised lands almost never keep their promises- and enriches it based on both political relevance -its background is the threats and murders suffered by those Colombians who fight for the land restitution that were stolen from them by paramilitary groups – as well as, above all, from a constant succession of images that are overwhelming due to their violenceor its kinetic muscle, or its poetry, or its sadness, or its oneiric charge, or its hallucinogenic power, or its symbolic connotations, or several of those qualities at the same time.
The victory of ‘The kings of the world’, in any case, is relevant for two more reasons. Firstly, it confirms the effectiveness of the San Sebastian event as filmmaker’s quarry, because Mora obtains this award five years after winning several prizes here with his first film, ‘Kill Jesus’ (2017). Second, because it is the third consecutive Golden Shell awarded to a female filmmaker. In other words, in the last three years the same number of women have won the award as in the previous 67. And that, whichever way you look at it, is a good thing.
Awards discussed
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With regard to the Special Jury Prize awarded to ‘Runner’, the debut feature by the American Marian Mathiasrepresents the very just vindication of a film that tiptoed through San Sebastián not only because of the neglect of the festival -it gave the feeling of having been shoehorned into the program- but also because of its own modesty: it is a feature film of such only 76 minutes that do not include a single dramatic fuss, and that extracts the maximum possible expressive profitability both from the circumspection of its protagonist couple, two young people who find in their incipient friendship an escape route from the depressing reality, as well as from a landscape determined by mud, rain and wind. And also understandable is the award for Best Direction obtained by the Japanese Genki Kawamura thanks to his first film, ‘A Hundred Flowers’, portrait of the problematic relationship between a mature woman whose mind is deteriorating due to Alzheimer’s and a son who lives plagued by childhood trauma; Until now known above all for producing some of the essential ‘anime’ feature films of recent years, Kawamura shows off enough aesthetic sophistication when contemplating his protagonist partner as if to compensate for his excessive inclination to melodrama.
The newly announced winners lose meaning, yes, as soon as you descend along its steps. Given the dramatic power that the young Carla Quilez exhibits in the skin of a teenage mother in the center of ‘The motherly’second film of Pilar Palomero, it is very difficult to understand why the jury made him share the award for Best Leading Performance with Paul Kircher; the young actor does not deserve to be singled out as guilty of the numerous problems that afflict the new French film Christophe Honoré, ‘Winter Boy’, but it also doesn’t do anything on-screen to mitigate them. With regard to the award for Best Supporting Performance awarded to Renata Lermann for his work in ‘El suplente’, it is such a crazy decision – his work does not allow any acting talent to be glimpsed – that it is tempting to interpret it as a reward to who is not only the director of the film but also the girl’s father, the Argentinian Diego Lermann. Be that as it may, his choice is no more difficult to explain than the statuette awarded to ‘A Woman’, from Chinese Wang Chao, in the category of Best Screenplay. The one in San Sebastian is perhaps a festival that is too used to including irrelevant films in its programming, and almost none of those that have aspired to win this year are as irrelevant as this one.