Ira Sachs’ jury handed Leigh’s latest, said to be his last, a trio of awards for Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Lead Performance for Kate O’Flynn.
“Tender Loving Care,” the latest and purportedly last film by veteran British writer-director Mike Leigh, was allegedly turned down for a Competition slot at the Venice Film Festival — but it had the last laugh at San Sebastián, ruling the Spanish festival’s awards ceremony with three prizes in the main competition, including the Golden Shell for Best Film.
The jury, headed by U.S. filmmaker Ira Sachs, was so enamored of the intimate character drama about social and familial care that they handed Leigh a second win for Best Screenplay, while ensemble standout Kate O’Flynn — fresh from her Emmy victory for “Widow’s Bay” — was one of two women awarded the non-gendered Best Lead Performance prize, for her funny, gradually heartbreaking performance as a put-upon London social worker facing up to the ailing health of her own parents.
Neither Leigh nor O’Flynn was present at the ceremony, though both sent video acceptance speeches: Leigh, keeping it brief, concluded his acceptance with a simple “thank you, thank you and love to everybody,” while O’Flynn celebrated “Tender Loving Care” as “[a] film that sees empathy as a strength and the attempt to care important.” She further dedicated her award to Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson and Alice Bailey Johnson, her three co-stars in an equally weighted quartet. Jesson and Bailey Johnson, meanwhile, were on hand to accept Leigh’s screenplay award on his behalf, with Jesson addressing the “misunderstanding” that the director’s films are improvised, praising the “precision, rigor and purpose” of Leigh’s shooting process.
Another multiple prizewinner was Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s handsome rural epic “Growth of the Soil,” which was recently selected as Norway’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. Its star Asta Kamma August, daughter of the filmmaker Bille August, shared the Best Lead Performance award with O’Flynn for her affecting turn as one half of a young couple building a farmstead from scratch in the early 20th century. Oskar Dahlsbakken won Best Cinematography for his sturdy lensing of the film’s craggily spectacular Nordic mountainscapes.
Also awarded by the jury — which in addition to Sachs, included actors Bill Skarsgård, Alice Braga and Patricia López Arnaiz, producer Mike Goodridge, filmmaker Genki Kawamura and screenwriter Catherine Paillé — was “Border,” a short, striking and sexually explicit debut feature by Hong Kong filmmaker Ah Biao, which won the Special Jury Prize for its originality and daring. Swedish Sámi filmmaker Amanda Kernell won Best Director for “Brace Your Heart,” a portrait of a young female reindeer herder in the indigenous Sámi community, which also picked up a special mention in Toronto’s Platform competition last week. In an impassioned speech, Kernell explained her deeply personal motivation for making the film, which she said she hoped would “heal old wounds, especially in my family.”
With only five of the 17 films in competition taking prizes, high-profile titles going home empty-handed included Fatih Akin’s festival opener “Ghost Song,” Pablo Larraín’s “My Sad Dead,” Fred Cavayé’s all-star “Les Miserables” adaptation and Jesse Eisenberg’s fall festival favorite “The Debut.” The only Spanish winner in competition, meanwhile, was veteran character actor Javier Cámara, a popular Best Supporting Performance pick for his turn in the comic fantasy “5 More Minutes.” After three consecutive years of Spanish films taking the Golden Shell, this year marks a slightly disappointing turnout for the home team.
But national pride was bolstered by the Audience Award for Best Film — which went, to absolutely no one’s surprise, to local favorites Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for their queer epic “La Bola Negra,” one week after the international festival sensation took the People’s Choice Award at Toronto. A second Audience Award for Best European Film — which presumably discounts the main award winner — went to docmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor for “NAZA,” their searing exposé of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, which won the Jury Prize at Venice earlier this month. It’s the second year in a row that San Sebastián audiences have shown their solidarity with the pro-Palestinian movement: Last year’s Audience Award went to Kaouther Ben Hania’s eventually Oscar-nominated “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”
Several of the night’s winners, moreover, expressed their support for the people of Palestine on stage. August, pointing to the pro-Palestine pin on her dress, concluded her speech by saying, “No one is free until everyone is free — free Palestine.” Meanwhile, German filmmaker Naëmi Ada offered a similarly worded sentiment with a more pointed kicker in her acceptance of the New Directors award: “There is no individual liberation without collective liberation,” she said, adding, “I condemn the complicity of the German state in the genocide.”
Ada’s debut feature “Body of Glass” — a dark psychological drama about a young dancer who immerses herself in a stranger’s grieving circle — was the top prizewinner in New Directors, the festival’s separate competition for first-time filmmakers; a special mention went to “The World Before,” a coming-of-age romance by South Korean director Yoon Dan-bi.
Top prizes in the festival’s two other competitive sections went to titles that have already gathered significant acclaim on the festival circuit. Argentine-American photographer-turned-filmmaker Alessandra Sanguinetti won the top prize in the Latin Horizons strand for her feature documentary “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer,” shot over the course of more than 20 years in rural Argentina, which won multiple awards, including Best First Film, at Locarno in August.
In the more experimentally-oriented Zabaltegi-Tabakalera competition, Jane Schoenbrun emerged victorious for her delicious summer cult item “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” — a film she described, in her video acceptance speech, as “a celebration of being a little freak, and also a celebration of cinema.” The first statement is a far cry from anything one can imagine Mike Leigh saying; the second, at San Sebastián, felt a more universal ideal.
Full list of award winners:
OFFICIAL SELECTION AWARDS
Golden Shell for Best Film: “Tender Loving Care,” Mike Leigh
Special Jury Prize: “Border,” Ah Biao
Silver Shell for Best Director: “Brace Your Heart,” Amanda Kernell
Silver Shell for Best Leading Performance: “Tender Loving Care,” Kate O’Flynn; “Growth of the Soil,” Asta Kamma August
Silver Shell for Best Supporting Performance: “5 More Minutes,” Javier Cámara
Jury Prize for Best Cinematography: “Growth of the Soil,” Oskar Dahlsbakken
Jury Prize for Best Screenplay: “Tender Loving Care,” Mike Leigh
OTHER OFFICIAL AWARDS
New Directors Award: “Body of Glass,” Naëmi Ada
Special Mention: “The World Before,” Yoon Dan-bi
Latin Horizons Award: “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer,” Alessandra Sanguinetti
Special Mention: “Flies,” Fernando Eimbcke
Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award: “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Jane Schoenbrun
Special Mention: “Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion,” María Aparicio
Best Original Music Award: “Milo,” Amine Bouhafa
Audience Award for Best Film: “La Bola Negra,” Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi
Audience Award for Best European Film: “NAZA,” Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor
Irizar Basque Film Award: “Txakun txakür,” Elsa Oliarj-Inès
Culinary Zinema Award: “Burgundy,” Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw
RTVE Another Look Award: “All of a Sudden,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Spanish Cooperation Award: “Five Years, Four Months,” Juan Miguel Gelacio and Esteban Hoyos García
Transforma Award: “Tender Loving Care,” Mike Leigh
PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED AWARDS
Nest Award: “Erased From the Map,” Maarij Reka
Special Mention: “Nobody Barks,” Julia Coldwell Serra
Euskadi Basque Country 2030 Agenda Award: “Ashes,” Diego Luna
Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Best Spanish Project: Pixentinel, Luis Zabala
Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Best European Project: Virtual Location Scouting, Antti Ahokoivu
Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Special Mention for Entrepreneurship: Virtual Location Scouting, Antti Ahokoivu
WIP Latam Industry Award: “Lovers Go Home!,” Juan Sebastián Mesa
Egeda Platino Industria Award For The Best WIP Latam: “Galerna,” Tatiana Huezo
WIP Europa Industry Award: “In a Manner of Speaking,” Val Jashari
WIP Europa Award: “In a Manner of Speaking,” Val Jashari
XIII Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum Best Project Award: “The Amateurs,” Felipe Solari Yrigoyen
DALE! Award: “The Illusions,” Ingrid Pokropek
Artekino International Award: “Mourning Sound,” Selma Cervantes
Casa Wabi-ESCINE Award: “The Spirit Healer Is Away for the Weekend,” Inês Nunes
Tanta Award: “Akira,” Ekain Albite
Sideral Award: “Akira,” Ekain Albite
Music Library & SFX Award: “Shady Birds,” Zaira Zanguitu
Dogwoof Award: “Different Colors of Sabir,” Safaa Khatib
Epe-Ibaia-Elkargi Award: “The Hammock,” Alfonso García
Eusko Label Micro Short Film Award: “Esperantza,” Josu Ozaita
Runner-up: “Hands,” Mikel Urretabizkaia