El año del descubrimiento, Corpus Christie, and My Mexican Bretzel have managed to win the main Sant Jordi Awards in their 65th edition, which recognize the best works released during the past year 2020. The Sant Jordi Film Awards are the oldest awards in Spain, granted by RNE and chosen by a broad jury of film critics from Catalan media, chaired by Conxita Casanovas, director of the Ràdio 4 program Va de cine. The awards ceremony will be held on dates yet to be determined and will depend on the health situation and relevant regulations.
One of the characteristics of the Sant Jordi Awards is that they usually maintain a certain distance in titles and names from the favorites and winners in other major film events of the year, such as the Goya, Feroz, or the Film Writers' Circle awards; they have their own unique stamp and a style that is difficult to predict.
In this latest edition, for example, El año del descubrimiento, by Luis López Carrasco, is awarded as Best Spanish Film, a three-and-a-half-hour documentary, shot and planned with a split screen, which deals, among several other issues, with the industrial dismantling of Cartagena during 1992, while the Seville Expo, the V Centenary, and the Barcelona Olympic Games filled the Spanish social atmosphere with splendor. A difficult, distinct award that demonstrates the Sant Jordi Awards' vocation for finding excellence and peculiarity where it is not easy to see.
Similarly, uniqueness is appreciated in the choice of its Best Debut Film, My Mexican Bretzel, by Nuria Giménez Lorang, an absolutely innovative work, with an enormous aesthetic and nostalgic charge, which wanders along that sometimes diffuse line between documentary and fiction. As for Corpus Christie, by the Polish Jan Komasa, considered Best Foreign Film, it has enormous cinematographic qualities and addresses complex ethical conflicts, but only that vocation of the Sant Jordi Awards can highlight its values above some of the gigantic titles that powerful American cinema gave us in 2020, such as Mank, by David Fincher, or 1917, by Sam Mendes.
The Sant Jordi awards also recognize the best Spanish and foreign actors and actresses, and these accolades have gone to Patricia López Arnaiz, protagonist of Ane, directed by David O. Sañudo, and of Uno para todos, by David Illundain; Mario Casas, for his notable performance in No matarás, by David Victori, and in the foreign performance category, to Mariana di Girolamo, for her very tough work in Ema, by the Chilean Pablo Larraín, and to Italian actor Luca Martinelli for his attractive portrayal of the character created by Jack London in the film Martin Eden, by Pietro Marcello.