SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 26 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Canary Islands Fantastic Film Festival Ciudad de La Laguna, Isla Calavera, has announced this Saturday the winning films of its sixth edition. The Korean film ‘Project Wolf Hunting’, by Kim Hong-sun, has won the Skull Island Jury Award for Best Film for “its spirit of unpretentious genre cinema, spectacular direction and special effects and its uninhibited festive and bloody spirit “.
The best film for the public at the Isla Calavera Festival, determined by the votes of the spectators, has been ‘Irati’, Paul Urkijo Alijo’s second feature film, a tribute to the fascinating Basque mythology inspired by historical events, with Basque as the main language.
The Isla Calavera Jury Award for Best Director went to Eduardo Casanova for ‘La piedad’, also his second film, “for his ability to create his own world of universal projection and a non-transferable sense of aesthetics; in addition to a splendid Direction of actors”.
The Best Actress Award went to Eline Schumacher “for her impressive incarnation of victim and perpetrator” in ‘Megalomaniac’, a title that also received a special mention from the Jury “for its ruthless portrayal of systemic family violence plagued by injustice and demons everyday”.
The Jury, “while somewhat surprised by the almost total absence of leading male characters”, has awarded the ‘Jack Taylor’ Award for Best Actor, ex aequo, to the leading actors of the Korean thriller ‘Hunt’, Lee Jung- jae and Jung Woo-sung, “for their unrelenting portrayal of two psychologically complex characters caught on edge.”
The Best Screenplay Award went to Quentin Dupieux for ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’ “for his exquisitely convoluted, intelligent sense of humor and irony applied to the clichés of the fantastic genre”; while the ‘Colin Arthur’ Award for Best Special Effects has been awarded to the science fiction film ‘Vesper’ “for its imaginative design of new biological life forms in an apocalyptic future”.
The Jury of the Official Section of Feature Films in Competition of the sixth edition of the Canary Islands Fantastic Film Festival Ciudad de La Laguna this year was made up of the writer and film critic Jesús Palacios (as president), the actress Paola Bontempi, the journalist director of TVE, specializing in cinema, José Fernández, the writer and graphic artist Rakel Suárez and the writer Ángel Vallecillo.
SHORT FILMS
Within the Official Short Film Section, the winning title was ‘La nueva’, by Iván Villamel, “for its integration within the keys of the genre, with a careful staging, good work by the actors and outstanding work in the sections of visual effects and makeup”. ‘Zombie Meteor’, by Alfonso Fulgencio and José Luis Farias, has received a special mention from the Jury for “its commitment to animation, with careful work within this field and for offering an original and fresh proposal”.
The Jury of the Short Film Section was made up of actress Karen Hernández (president), Pablo Lozano, director of the Úbeda International European Comic Festival; the professor of English philology at the University of La Laguna Fabián Orán; and the journalist and investigator of facts and extrasensory phenomena José Gregorio González.
The list of winners of the VI Isla Calavera Canary Islands Fantastic Film Festival is completed with the award given by the viewers for Best Short Film for ‘Superfucked’, by Gastón Haag, which presents a conflictive and crazy world where the fashion of becoming in superhero.
The ruling was read this Saturday at a press conference, at the Teatro Leal, and they will be announced on the stage of the Teatro Leal at the Isla Calavera 2022 Closing Gala, where actress Sarah Douglas will also collect her honorary awards (‘Superman’, ‘Conan the Destroyer’) and Italian film director Lamberto Bava (‘Demons’).
In addition, the dubbing actor Camilo García will collect the Legend of the Fantastic Award in recognition of his career. His first important role was voicing Han Solo in Spanish in ‘Star Wars’ (‘Episode IV: A New Hope), by George Lucas, and he has been one of the most disturbing voices in the history of fantastic cinema, Hannibal Lecter’s in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’. In addition to Harrison Ford and Anthony Hopkins, he is the regular voice of other great actors such as Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte, Dennis Hooper, Jon Voight, Tommy Lee Jones or Robert Duvall, among others.
At the closing ceremony, Jesús Palacios and the writer, screenwriter and film critic Ángel Sala, director of the Sitges Festival since 2001, will receive the Isla Calavera Awards for the Diffusion of Fantastic.
