Spain’s Valladolid International Film Festival – known in Spain as Seminci – opens Friday, Oct. 23 with 30 world premieres and a lineup bringing together some of international cinema’s most acclaimed auteurs and an emerging generation of Spanish filmmakers.
Running through Oct. 31, the festival’s 71st edition features 22 films in official competition and 208 titles overall — 137 features and 71 shorts — including 121 premieres.
The gathering is being steered by two longtime members of the team that helped shape Seminci’s recent artistic identity. Mariona Viader, previously general coordinator, and Javier H. Estrada, formerly head of programming, have stepped in as interim co-directors following the death of dynamic festival director José Luis Cienfuegos in December, maintaining the programming vision he introduced in 2023.
The selection embraces widely different approaches to filmmaking, from formally experimental work to more accessible independent productions, while exploring political upheaval, memory, exile and intimate family relationships.
“What matters about Seminci is that our programming allows us to explore what auteur cinema means,” Estrada says.
Acclaimed Voices, New Perspectives
Among the contenders for Valladolid’s top prize, the Golden Spike, are May el-Toukhy’s “Woman Unknown,” winner of Venice’s Golden Lion, and İlker Çatak’s Berlin Golden Bear winner “Yellow Letters.”
“When we selected the films for Seminci, we had no idea ‘Woman Unknown’ would win the Golden Lion,” Estrada says.
Elsewhere in the competition, Alain Gomis’ “Dao” connects a wedding in France with a memorial ceremony in Guinea-Bissau, weaving family histories across continents. In “Double Freedom,” Lisandro Alonso returns to the world of his breakthrough “La libertad” 25 years later, revisiting ideas of solitude and independence.
In Markus Schleinzer’s “Rose,” Berlin best performance winner Sandra Hüller plays a woman passing herself off as a man in 17th-century Europe. Lance Hammer’s “Queen at Sea,” starring Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay, turns to the complexities of family relationships.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s final co-written screenplay provides the basis for Andrea Pallaoro’s “The Echo Chamber,” starring Alicia Vikander and Susan Sarandon.
The festival’s opening and closing films reinforce its mix of distinctive filmmaking voices and international star power. Hungarian director Lili Horvát, who won Valladolid’s Golden Spike in 2020, returns with “My Notes on Mars,” starring Mackenzie Davis (“Blade Runner 2049”). Gael García Bernal closes the event with “Hombre al agua,” his third directorial feature.
The Significance of a World Premiere
While many of the international competition titles have already made their mark on the festival circuit, 30 films — just over half of them Spanish productions or co-productions — will face their first audiences at Seminci.
“A world premiere always entails a certain vulnerability for filmmakers,” Estrada says. “The fact that so many films choose Seminci for their world premieres is a great responsibility. We have to take care of each film. But it’s also a cause for celebration. The moment audiences see a film for the first time is truly exciting.”
The Spanish selection includes established genre directors alongside filmmakers making their feature debuts.
Daniel Calparsoro’s “El confidente,” screening in the official selection out of competition, is set during the final years of Basque terrorist group ETA and stars Javier Gutiérrez and Miguel Herrán. Bowfinger International Pictures produces.
Also screening out of competition is David Martín de los Santos’ Spanish-Peruvian co-production “Un hombre en un puente,” involving Vértigo Films.
Family relationships emerge as a recurring theme across the Spanish selection, particularly among filmmakers exploring the bonds, conflicts and shifting definitions of family.
“Rethinking the concept of family is one of the central themes of this year’s Seminci,” Estrada says.
Actor Ricardo Gómez’s directing debut “Una familia,” screening out of competition and distributed in Spain by Filmax, explores the secrets and unresolved wounds shaping relationships between parents and children. Meanwhile, Ione Hernández Sáenz’s feature debut “Hermanas,” starring Elena Anaya and Emma Suárez, competes for the Golden Spike with a drama about two sisters whose relationship is tested by a family crisis.
The theme also extends to the Meeting Point competition, where Sandra Sánchez’s “A nadadora” follows a teenager struggling with a troubled family background, while Ledicia Sola’s “As augas” explores the possibility of redefining family through friendship. Both have their world premieres in Valladolid, alongside Marc Ferrer’s black-and-white satirical comedy “Cinemanía,” which previously participated in ECAM Forum’s Last Push.
Another discovery is Claudia Estrada Tarascó’s feature debut “Salen las lobas,” inspired by her sister’s experiences in a juvenile justice facility. For Oceanika’s producer Alba Sotorra, its Valladolid launch comes at a key moment for the film.
“Seminci is a strategic place to present Claudia Estrada’s first film, both because of its international reach and its standing in Spain,” Sotorra says.
Beyond the debut features, Spanish cinema is also represented in the Golden Spike competition by animation and independent co-productions.
Ervin Han and Raúl García’s “The Violinist,” a Singapore-led co-production from Robot Playground Media, Spain’s TV ON Producciones and Italy’s Altri Occhi, won Annecy’s best feature Cristal and SACEM music prize ahead of its Nov. 13 Spanish theatrical release via Wanda Visión.
Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado’s “Las islas afortunadas” competes for the Golden Spike following its Toronto world premiere. Bendita Film Sales handles international sales of this period drama, whose producers are in talks with several distributors for a potential Spanish theatrical release.
A festival selection may not seal a deal, but it can “give negotiations the push they sometimes need,” says Bendita CEO Luis Renart.
The world premieres also extend beyond feature films. Movistar Plus unveils the first three episodes of crime thriller “Killing a Bear” (Matar a un oso”), created by Jorge and Alberto Sánchez-Cabezudo, starring Eduard Fernández and co-produced with Arte France.
Meanwhile, “SerYo,” an El Terrat documentary co-directed by Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Marta Solaz and Verónica Díaz Pérez, explores artistic creation during Peris-Mencheta’s illness.
Five Iranian filmmakers feature across Seminci’s lineup, including Ali Asgari’s “A Bit of Light,” Pegah Ahangarani’s documentary “Essays for a Revolution” and films by Mani Haghighi, Mahsa Karampour and Karim Lakzadeh. The independently selected works explore war, repression, exile and cultural identity.
“It was the quality of the films themselves, and above all how different they are from one another,” Estrada says. “Each filmmaker, in their own style, demonstrates the creative strength of Iranian cinema.”
Seminci’s appetite for adventurous filmmaking finds a particularly strong expression in Alchemies, a 10-film competition launched in 2023 and devoted to works that challenge conventional storytelling.
Highlights include Portuguese filmmakers João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata’s “13 Pins,” blending religious imagery and desire; Ted Fendt’s Berlin-set “Foreign Travel”; and Karim Lakzadeh’s darkly comic “Living Twice, Dying Thrice,” about miners who fake their deaths to secure compensation for their families. Spanish contenders include David Baute’s “Benigno,” an intimate portrait of an elderly man living in his childhood home, and Sebastián Uría’s “Adiós, ríos,” exploring the disappearance of a rural community.
The non-competitive Memory & Utopia section revisits seven decades of cinema through 14 films exploring the interplay of fantasy, surrealism and historical memory. Highlights include the world premiere of the restored version of Ana Mariscal’s 1962 Franco-era spy thriller “Occidente y sabotaje,” 4K restorations of Luis Buñuel’s masterpice “Un chien andalou” and “L’Age d’Or,” and Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s anime landmark “Ninja Scroll.” The selection also features works by Věra Chytilová, Andrzej Wajda and Ildikó Enyedi.
Sound Moves to the Foreground
Seminci also devotes a major retrospective to the role of sound in cinema.
“The narrative power of sound often takes a back seat, and this year we wanted to bring it to the forefront,” Viader says.
The program moves from Fritz Lang’s “M” and Jacques Tati’s “Playtime” to Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” exploring how filmmakers have used sound to convey information, build suspense and transform audiences’ emotional experiences.
An exhibition, publication and professional encounters developed with the European Film Academy’s Sound Chapter accompany the screenings.
Beyond its film program, Seminci also hosts the sixth Merci independent film market and the La Meseta labs, supporting independent theatrical distribution and short-film development.
The festival’s honorary awards recognize Valladolid-born Goya-winning actress Elvira Mínguez (“Tapas,” “Everybody Knows”) and Chilean filmmaker Valeria Sarmiento, presenting “Behind the Rain,” announced as her final film. The documentary filmmaking master’s program at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University receives an Academic Honorary Golden Spike.
In keeping with the festival’s focus on sound, veteran Hollywood production sound mixer Willie D. Burton, an eight-time Oscar nominee and twice a winner, for “Bird” and “Dreamgirls,” receives an Honorary Golden Spike.