‘The Girls’ is enshrined in the most sober and fastest Goya in history

Banderas appeared on stage with the 166 nominees framed live from their homes in an exciting image. He recalled “the nightmare of empty theaters” and Malaga’s commitment to Spanish cinema. The actor reflected on the role of the world of cinema and culture at this time: «We are storytellers and that is what we will inevitably do, each one in their own way, trying to understand how this reality has affected us. His slow, serious, concentrated tone indicated that this was not going to be just another gala. “We are not essential workers, perhaps conveniently necessary,” she pointed out with as many tables as the co-director of the party, María Casado. After the minute of silence they appeared on stage Pedro Almodóvar, Juan Antonio Bayona, Penélope Cruz, Alejandro Amenábar and Paz Vega. Almost nothing.

The red carpet was not given up with the 40 actors and directors who presented the awards in Malaga. There were also previous connections with some of the nominees, some of them in their homes and others in hotels with the rest of the team. Some historic Goyas not only because of the coronavirus: For the first time, the percentage of women who aspired to a statuette was 41%. In a very opportune gesture, The Goya for best film was awarded to Ana María Ruiz López, the nurse who created the library in the Ifema field hospital that she baptized ‘I will resist’. “Spain is the country in Europe where the most health workers have been infected,” she recalled. The pace of the delivery was rapid as there were no climbs or exits to the stage. Nor did the camera show the stalls. The fiber optics did not fail and the winners gave short thanks. Things became so agile that perhaps this scheme will have to be adopted in future editions.

‘Akelarre’directed by the Argentine Pablo Aguerogot five Goyas. Three technical awards (costumes, makeup and hair and special effects) as well as that of best artistic direction for Mikel Serrano and original music, which the composer Aránzazu Calleja and Maite Arroitajauregi received singing, brain of Mursego, who combined Basque and Spanish in their thanks. A reward for the great effort of producing a film with a budget of 3 million euros, which travels to the 17th century to show how machismo subjugated women by accusing them of being witches. The Guipuzcoan John Laspiur At 26 years old, she is best new actress for her role in ‘Ane’, a daughter enrolled in the kale borroka who confronts her mother, a security guard at the high-speed train works in Vitoria in 2009. Laspiur, who also appears in ‘Akelarre’, starts her career in the best possible way.

The Goya for best actress went, as expected after winning the Forqué and the Feroz, to Patricia López Arnáiz, who received it from a rural house in Burgos. The protagonist of ‘Ane’, who will turn 40 in April, holds David Pérez Sañudo’s debut film with her tense and hurt gaze. Seen in the film adaptations of the ‘Baztán Trilogy’ by Dolores Redondo, ‘While the War Dures’ and series such as ‘The Plague’ and ‘The Other Look’, the actress from Vitoria, who three years ago made a living from taking care of children in a dining room and putting on concerts, is consecrated with an award that forever removes her from supporting roles. At the moment, she is already filming a series with Netflix.

‘Donkey’, that It also won the Goya for best adapted screenplay.is already on platforms such as Filmin and Movistar+, but it should return to theaters after a poor premiere in the middle of the pandemic that ended with barely 12,000 viewers.

Mario Casas At 34 years old, he gets the Goya with his first nomination. She achieves it with ‘Thou shalt not kill’, a maddening thriller with some plausibility problems, in which he plays a good guy who has spent his life taking care of his father and who, upon his death, lives a nightmarish night dragged by a tattooed femme fatale (Milena Smit , the new girl Almodóvar). It is not by far the best film by an actor who has finally managed to distance himself from his early days as a teenage sex symbol by choosing risky roles.

Mariano Barroso, president of the Academy, recalled how much cinema has helped us in this last year, even though the theaters were forced to close. “In one way or another, we have continued watching movies,” he noted in reference to streaming platforms, which have come during the pandemic to turn the tables. AND praised, nobility oblige, Santiago Segura, that pulled the box office with ‘Padre no hay más que uno 2’, the film that grossed the most in 2020 and that has not received a single nomination. “Cinema has healed us,” he concluded. The recorded videos of Hollywood stars and other international actors in support of Spanish cinema were brief and did not hinder the development of the gala. The question remains whether Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone or Tom Cruise know our cinematography…

More milestones in the 35-year history of the awards. The 18 year old Frenchman Adam Nourou is the first black actor to win a Goya for ‘Adú’, where he plays a teenager who crosses Africa to try to reach Spain in the company of another orphan. The Bolivian living in Spain Daniela Cajías became the first director of photography to win a Goya in this section for ‘The Girls’. The most moving thanks was from Nathalie Poza, best supporting actress for ‘Rosa’s Wedding’, remembering her mother, whom she has not hugged for a long time. Alberto San Juan, best supporting actor for ‘Sentimental’, launched a dig at the Socialist Party –“Housing is a basic human right”– in the only political note of a night that other years became a rally.

In the end, having the winners say thank you from their homes translated into greater spontaneity than if they had done so from the stage. The best example, the first Goya of the night, the one with the best costumes in ‘Akelarre’, in which Nerea Torrijos shouted at her boyfriend, the director Paul Urkijo, “Come here, damn it!” The biggest mistake, forgetting in the ‘in memoriam’ of Rosa María Sardá, who died on June 11, was not such: the actress asked the Academy not to leave.