Goya Awards: bulls, religion, bison and the brand new folklore of Spanish cinema | Culture | EUROtoday

It is curious that when thanking the perfect movie award for On Sundays, function movie that this weekend gained probably the most related awards on the final Goya gala, one in every of its producers, Sandra Hermida, spoke of “the intimate as political.” It is curious as a result of Albert Serra had additionally used the idea of “intimacy” in his speech for the Goya for greatest documentary initially of the 40 years of the Spanish movie trade awards.

Serra achieved his first Goya for the distinctive Lonely afternoons and mentioned: “Today we talk about many political issues here and this film, in a modest way, deals with how the political and the ideological collide with intimacy…[Tardes de soledad] It talks about how a controversial topic that not everyone likes is experienced from intimacy.” Without saying the word, the director spoke of the rite of bullfighting. Without saying the word either, the creators of Sundays They referred to another type of national liturgy, that of the Catholic faith.

That exploration of intimacy in Lonely afternoons explains the point of view of the film but raises some doubts in the case of Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s vision of a teenager who decides to become a cloistered nun. The nuance between the intimate (always secret and enigmatic) and the personal or private (closer to the domestic and familiar) in this case matters. Both films, winners of the Golden Shell in consecutive years at the San Sebastián festival, move around religious and ritual concepts, but while Serra manages to bring us closer through his meticulous observation to the antagonistic and brutal mystery of the bulls, that of the animal and that of the bullfighter, Sundays It is narratively confusing and problematic with the spiritual enigma that surrounds its protagonist. It is the main Achilles heel of the winner of some Goya (best film; direction; original screenplay; actress, Patricia López Arnaiz; and supporting cast, Nagore Aramburu) that replicated almost to the letter the pools that gave the winner to Sundays against its main rival, Sirât, by Oliver Laxe.

In a gala that served as a loudspeaker for different social and political causes, held on the same day that the United States was rushing into a new war in the Middle East, the film that best represents and confronts this unbridled present was left without any of the main awards. Sirât He obtained more goyas, six – best sound, editing, soundtrack, production direction, photography and art direction – but despite his extraordinary international career and his election to represent Spain in the next Oscars, the 3,000 members of the Academy left Laxe, director and co-writer, out of the list of winners. The contradiction is not new and, nevertheless, Sirât He had his recognition. Its winners used the words “journey” and “adventure” to clarify the expertise of this formidable movie, and its musician, Kangding Ray, intoned his dedication to all of the ravers of the world: “because we dance together and we resist together.”

The harvest of Spanish cinema of 2025, like the international one, deserves applause. Films that asked for more coverage have been left out, such as The good lyrics, by Celia Rico, the Pilgrimage, by Carla Simón, but there was a lot to choose from and it is difficult to refute the place occupied by a debut film as delicate as Deafwhich received three goyas: best supporting actor for Álvaro Cervantes, best new actress for Miriam Garlo, and best new director for Eva Libertad. The moving Maspalomas It took the award for its main actor, Jose Ramon Soroiz, as could not be expected. Its cast works like clockwork. So much Deaf as Maspalomas They bring us closer to invisible realities. Manuel Gómez Pereira and Joaquín Oristrell won the Goya for best adapted script for the funny The Dinner and they denounced another type of invisibility, that of comedy.

Flowers for Antonio It was a candidate for best documentary but the academics, wisely, chose Serra and gave Alba Flores and Sílvia Pérez Cruz the award for best song. His speech shone with its own light. It was one of the most emotional moments of the gala. Through the wise hand of Pérez Cruz, Antonio Flores’ daughter has discovered her own voice and to achieve this she has faced mourning for the death of her father, her orphanhood and even the all-powerful figure of her grandmother, another icon of our culture reviewed from an intimate truth.

The Goya awarded works around Spanish identity pillars such as bulls, the church or even the Flores family, but the always questioned place of Spanish cinema itself in our culture remained up in the air. The president of the Academy, Fernando Méndez-Leite, said goodbye to his position, accepting with resignation that today there is more talk about “movies” than “movies.” And the honorary winner, Gonzalo Suárez, defended the validity of this art despite the attacks of the passage of time: “Cinema is the final refuge for daydreaming. And this takes me again to that first bison that the ancestors painted within the caves. I’m proud that cinema has survived the networks and the caves, though now the bison is me.”