15/11/2005

French cinema was under the spotlight at the 2nd Seville Film Festival and it continued to make a splash in the awards ceremony that took place last weekend. Jacques Audiard's The beat my heart skipped [+see also:
trailer
film profile] was the major winner of the night, receiving the 60.000€ Golden Giraldino. Hidden by Michael Haneke (voir le Focus) won the Eurimages Award (30.000€) and Patrice Chéreau received the Honour Giraldino. The director's latest opus Gabrielle [+see also:
film review
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film profile] closed eight days of films in which Seville became the centre of European Cinema.

Still in the official section Jörg Kalt's Crash test dummies [+see also:
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film profile] got the Silver Giraldino and Johanna [+see also:
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film profile] by Kornél Mundruczó (see the making of) the jury's special award. In the side bar section Europa_Europa, the 30.000€ award was given to the Italian director Alessandro D’Alatri for his film La febbre [+see also:
trailer
film profile] while the Eurodoc Award was attributed to Soren Fauli and Mikala Krogh for Min morfars morder (Denmark). All these awards will be given to the national distributors of the films in order to improve the films promotion and commercial release.

With an audience of 65.000 people (20% more than in its first edition), Seville consolidated this year its reputation as the most European film festival of Spain thanks to its privileged partnerships with Eurimages and the European Film Promotion, which took to the capital of Andalusia ten of the Shooting Stars of 2005, presented earlier this year in the Berlinale.

According to Manuel Grosso, director of the festival, "The great variety of the winners proves that European cinema is powerful". Mr. Grosso goes further: "European films, please, surprise and thrill. Without doubt cinema from the old continent found its audience".