The Goya awards, the most important prize of Spanish film industry

As well as Hollywood cinematographic industry is having its usual award ceremonies season (Golden Globes, Oscar), also in Spain we are about to celebrate one of the most important: the Goya awards. The 32^nd edition will take place the 3^rd of February in Madrid, the city that has been the stage of some main Spanish films of our history. Thanks to the upcoming event, we are going to tell you some curiosities about the history of the awards and what films aim to be the winner of the Goya for the best film. Let’s see if one of them makes you to go to the cinema.
Since the first edition in 1987, the winner receives a bust of the famous painter Francisco de Goya. The Academy of Cinematographic Arts considered that Goya should represent this popular ceremony since they found in his paintings a marked cinematographic concept.
Throughout all its editions, the Goya awards have recognized the work of many great actors, filmmakers and workers of the Spanish film industry; some of them even made the leap to Hollywood and became Oscar winners. Alejandro Amenábar for example is the film director that more Goyas won of all editions (14) with Mar Adentro. The same film would win later an Oscar as the best foreign film. The most successful actor is Javier Bardem with 5 awards, an Oscar winner too. Other directors and international Spanish actors such as Penélope Cruz (3), Pedro Almodóvar (6) or Antonio Banderas (1) have also been awarded.
Foreign actresses such as Nicole Kidman or Naomi Watts and actors such as Ryan Reynolds or Ewan McGregor received a nominee in some of the past editions, thanks to their work in a Spanish film production.
The gala has been on many occasions controversial, not for reasons related with films, but because some of the winners or the presenters themselves have taken advantage of the big echo of the ceremony to make political demands on stage in front of millions of viewers. On many occasions it transcended into the politics and mass-media of our country, generating contrasting opinions about the politicization of the awards ceremony.
In the upcoming edition, the Goya for the best film will be contended among these five films: Estiu 1993, a drama about Frida, a little child who tries to adapt to her new life living with her uncles after her mother’s death; Handia, film that tells how a couple of brothers in the 1800s travelled around Europe with the ambition of getting rich thanks to the surprising height of one of them; La librería, about a woman in the 50s who generates controversy among the members of a village with her idea of setting up a book shop there; Verónica, a terrifying story of a scary paranormal apparition that comes from a ouija session made by three teenagers –based on real events of ‘Caso Vallecas’, documented by the police in Madrid in 1992- and El autor, about a man’s desire of writing a novel taking inspiration from his daily life: but ha starts manipulating the facts with the aim of causing troubles, so that he can write a more interesting novel.
It is necessary to specify that Estiu 1993 was filmed in Catalan –in Spanish it is called Verano 1993- and Handia was filmed in Basque. It already happened in some of the past editions, to have films in different languages, but it is still quite uncommon.
At Spaneasy we would like to know if you have already had the chance of watching any Spanish film. Tell us your opinion about it or if you have a favourite one. Which one is it?