Thirty-five years after winning the 16mm section with Mirindas asesinas (1990), Álex de la Iglesia returns to ALCINE, the Alcalá de Henares / Comunidad de Madrid Film Festival, to inaugurate its 54th edition, on November 7 at the Teatro Salón Cervantes.
The Bilbao-born director will participate in the ALCINE 54 Opening Gala, where, in addition to meeting with the public, he will also collect the inaugural Piedra Angular Award, which recognizes essential figures who took their first steps at our festival, a breeding ground and mine of true diamonds in the rough. His vision of cinema, which broadened the scope of what was possible in Spanish cinema through the medium of fantasy and vitriolic comedy, shaped several generations of directors and audiences.
The Opening Gala (8:00 p.m., Teatro Salón Cervantes), with free admission upon receipt of tickets at the box office that same evening, will feature a performance by Consuelo de Huesos, a new project by painter Zaida Escobar and musician Ricardo Iglesias (Agua Rata, Perro Nahual) with a set specially designed to pay tribute to de la Iglesia.
Following the official opening of ALCINE 54, and still accompanied by Álex de la Iglesia, we'll see the 4K edition of La Comunidad, celebrating its 25th anniversary, restored by Mercury Films and FlixOlé. Starring Carmen Maura, accompanied by a wide-ranging cast, La Comunidad combines dark humor, suspense, and social criticism in one of the most iconic films of contemporary Spanish cinema on a still-current topic.
With its program now available and tickets on sale soon, ALCINE 54 and its lineup were presented this morning at the Teatro Salón Cervantes in Alcalá, at an event attended by Santiago Alonso, Councilor for Culture of Alcalá de Henares; Isabel Ruiz Maldonado, First Deputy Mayor, Director of the Department of Culture and Councilor for Tourism of Alcalá; Xiomara García, General Coordinator of Madrid Film Region; Pedro Toro, the festival's artistic director; Ana Pez and Kike Ibáñez, creators of the ALCINE Kids lineup, which this year will have its own children's gala; Ángela Campoy and Ana Batalla, programmers of Short Music; and actress Ana del Arco, who will present the Closing Gala.
Of the more than 1.300 short films received, 47 will compete for the Diamond Awards at the ALCINE 54 National and European Short Film Competitions, both of which qualify for the Goya and Oscar awards. Among them will be several premieres and some of the most acclaimed short films from festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, and San Sebastián. The juries will be composed of names such as Oliva Delcán, Pablo Hernando, Víctor Salmerón, Adara Sánchez, and, on the international side, festival programmers and directors Malaika Bova and Daniel Hadenius-Hebner.
Open Screen, the section dedicated to the debut features of short filmmakers like Álex de la Iglesia, who took their first steps at the festival, will draw on festivals such as Málaga, Atlántida, Sitges, and Annecy. Some titles will be presented at ALCINE 54 before their commercial run, such as Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake. Other titles will be Esmorza amb mi, with a presentation by actor Álvaro Cervantes; Muy lejos; Bodegón con fantasmas; Jone, a veces; and Sorda, one of the phenomena of the year. As a coda, the new work by animator Alberto Vázquez, Decorado, culminates in the symposium on comics and film organized by the Chair of Comics Research and Culture at the University of Alcalá.
"More than 150 films of all genres and for all audiences will shape this film festival, which is already a symbol of Alcalá de Henares and the Community of Madrid," said Pedro Toro.
Like Álex de la Iglesia's own universe, ALCINE 54's thematic sections will range from humor to horror, with the new (J)ALCINE section dedicated to comedy, and AL(U)CINE, transformed this year into a micro-festival of fantasy and horror films with surprise screenings and invited guests. Also joining the ALCINE EQUALITY section will address social issues from a gender perspective. All three sections will receive an audience award thanks to the General Foundation of the University of Alcalá and the Department of Equality.
At ALCINE 54, other sections dedicated to the most participatory filmmakers will be consolidated, such as the Alcalá Film Jam, the short film marathon in collaboration with the Alcalá Film Office; the Off-ALCINE section, which will screen and award some of the non-selected short films on the most outrageous night; and CANTERA Alcalá Short Film Lab, a new development laboratory for first-time professional short films launched by the Alcalá Film Office within the framework of ALCINE, where several projects will receive mentoring and compete for a cash prize of more than €20.000 to complete their film, thanks to the collaboration of a dozen institutions and companies.
The professional offerings are complemented by ALCINE Pro and its various discussion and networking opportunities, including, once again supported by the Alcalá Film Office, the Scouting The Walking Dead event, which focuses on the filming and location of this international series on the streets of Alcalá. There will be more free meetings with professionals for students and the general public at ALCINE Talks, on screenwriting, comedy, and marketing, with leading figures in the profession, thanks to organizations such as DAMA and ECAM.
In its new era, ALCINE continues to focus on cinema beyond the screen and its usual audiences, with unconventional sessions such as Short Music, featuring artists like Rosin de Palo, Sofía, and Rrrucculla paying homage to the world of David Lynch; the return of the closing concert with the Orquesta Ciudad de Alcalá; and the ALCINE Kids workshops, where children will work with artist Ana Pez to create the animated opening curtain for their own awards gala, featuring the band Buque Bólido.
The 54th edition of ALCINE will also consolidate the festival's most recent initiatives to expand its accessibility and work-life balance offerings, such as ALBIBE, the "Teta Session" to help families with babies balance their work and family life; the Vermouth Session, featuring audience-favorite short films during aperitif time; the Continuous Session, which will once again screen all the competing short films during the weekday afternoon; and the ESFAA European Audience Award, featuring the best short films from European festivals.
The ALCINE Archive section recovers director Iván Zulueta's time at the festival with a small documentary exhibition and the free digital reissue of La vanguardia frente al espejo, the out-of-print book about the author of Arrebato written by Carlos F. Heredero and published by the festival in 1989. The closing session Zulueta: Alcalá-Nueva York will put the recovered volume in dialogue with the edition of the Diario de Nueva York from his youth as part of the dissemination of the archive acquired by Filmoteca Española, as well as the survival of his figure in titles such as El último arrebato, by Marta Medina and Enrique López Lavigne, with which the festival will close.
In the exhibition 'Álex de la Iglesia: 35 Years Laughing in the Darkness', we'll explore the director's life and work, from the 1990 presentation of his Mirindas asesinas in Alcalá to the most recent projects from his production company, Pokeepsie Films. The exhibition explores rarely seen work, with a special focus on his graphic work for comics and role-playing games.
The other ALCINE 54 exhibitions will allow us to discover the film works of illustrator Adara Sánchez, with a recreation of her participation in Nacho Vigalondo's Daniela Forever, and a showcase of the best cartoonists in the current press in collaboration with the Quevedo Institute of the Arts of Humor.
…radical optimism as a challenging weapon against the future. That's the central theme of the ALCINE 54 poster, conceived by Equipo SOPA based on the "rock, paper, scissors" trilogy that has accompanied us for the past three years, and which was presented today.
Thus, we travel from the Stone Age to our "precious pieces" (short films) and "rough diamonds" (new talents), this time as black as coal in a new mineral proposal from this creative boutique. Equipo SOPA, also the creator of the diamonds that ALCINE will award to its winners, is responsible for creating visual universes such as Flores para Antonio and Los Domingos, winner of the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Film Festival.
The closing gala, presented once again by actress Ana del Arco, alongside Rubén Hernández, a regular in Yllana productions, and featuring soundtracks by three-time Ondas Award winner Javi Álvarez, will pay tribute to the universe of the much-missed David Lynch. The Los Angeles-born author will also be making a guest appearance at the Feature Film Festival in December with a screening of his classic Mulholland Drive, among some of the year's most talked-about premieres, such as the animated phenomenon Flow, the cathedral-like The Brutalist, and Timothée Chalamet's cover of Bob Dylan, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of his historic concert in Alcalá.
As a new feature, attendees of the opening and closing galas and the inaugural concert of Hidrogenesse (November 6, Teatro Salón Cervantes) will be able to enjoy a pre-show with music and cocktails by CAMPARI, the official aperitif of ALCINE 54.
