Thirteen works shall compete for the Richard Leacock Awards granted to films related to the Archipelago

 

• Four feature films and nine short films have been selected for the Canarias Cinema section of the 23rd edition of the Festival
• Macu Machín, Domingo J. González, Coré Ruiz and the team made up of David Pantaleón and José Víctor Fuentes will compete with their latest feature films, whereas Víctor Moreno, Marina Alberti, Pablo Borges, Pablo Vila, Fernando Alcántara, Jesús F. Cruz, Alexander Cabeza Trigg, the artistic couple Shira Ukrainitz and Omar Al Abdul Razzak, and, once again, David Pantaleón will participate with their short films
• Canarias Cinema, on the 30th anniversary of the Canarian production company La Mirada Producciones, will offer a special screening with two of its key works: the short film Roulette and the feature film Happy Men, both by Roberto Santiago.
• The quantity and quality of the submissions received, 91% more than in 2023, confirm the good moment the sector is experiencing in the Islands

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, April 5, 2024. The Richard Leacock Awards for films related to the Canary Islands already have candidates: thirteen works, nine short films and four feature films, aim to win the two categories’ awards. The films will be shown at Cines Yelmo Las Arenas during the first days of the Festival, starting on Friday, April 19.

Macu Machín, Domingo J. González, Coré Ruiz and the team formed by David Pantaleón and José Víctor Fuentes will introduce their full-length films -over 40 minutes-, while Víctor Moreno, Marina Alberti, Pablo Borges, Pablo Vila, Fernando Alcántara, Jesús F. Cruz, Alexander Cabeza Trigg, authors Shira Ukrainitz and Omar Al Abdul Razzak, and also David Pantaleón will compete with their short films.

According to what has been announced, the cinema made in the Canary Islands is in good health, as the number of entries received indicate: 65, 91% more than last year. Regarding the quality of the submitted works, the coordinator of the section, Rebeca P. Bethencourt, points out in the catalog that “Canarian cinema demonstrates once again its endemic documentary skill, but it also shows an insurgent professionalisation in more peripheral genres.”

The selection includes different voices, narratives, genres, and formats, something that indicates that “Canarian cinema,” in Bethencourt’s words, “erupts again in front of the whole world.”

Experienced filmmakers will meet once again in Canarias Cinema. Macu Machín has just won two Biznagas at the Malaga Film Festival with The Undergowth, a title that won the favor of the Gran Canarian market in 2023 and now seeks the highest recognition in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. David Pantaleón and José Víctor Fuentes are directors with trajectories inside and outside the Islands: in fact, the film they have submitted this year, An Inhabited Volcano, participated, among others, in the documentary category competition of the CINESPAÑA Festival in Toulouse, besides having been awarded at L’Alternativa and Márgenes. The filmmaker and founding partner of the distribution company Digital 104, the Tenerife-native Domingo J. González, will participate with his personal non-fiction work A House in the Countryside, which premiered at MiradasDoc, and Coré Ruiz, a regular at the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Film Festival, will compete with I’m Gonna Disappear, a work that received expert advice from MECAS during its development stage and won the OPEN ECAM, an award granted by the Escuela de Cinematografía y del Audiovisual de la Comunidad de Madrid, which was given to the author to facilitate the shooting of the film.

As for those filmmakers competing in the short film section, there are outstanding talents such as Víctor Moreno, ‘Honorary Award’ of the 20th edition of the Festival, who’s been linked to the Gran Canarian competition for more than a decade and who was able to compete with international authors when he was selected, in his debut, for the Official Selection. Now Moreno visits the city with his short film Meteor.

Other authors related to the festival over the years are Fernando Alcántara, who presents Space Settlers; Marina Alberti, a regular of the event as a producer and, now with Aitana, as a filmmaker; the pair of authors formed by the latest winner of this section’s Best Feature Film, Omar Al Abdul Razzak, and director Shira Ukrainitz, who remain faithful to an event in which they have presented animation short films like Confined Spaces or La prima cosa, and to which they return with The Last Mouflon. David Pantaleón, another regular of the section with an extraordinary résumé of Canarian awards and national and international recognition, will return to Yelmo Cines Las Arenas’ screens to present a short film. In 2024, the Gran Canarian will compete with Emerging.

Furthermore, there are other authors who repeat after past experiences: Pablo Borges, who debuted at the Festival with his short film Chlorine in 2023, returns with the work The Wandering Island; as does Pablo Vilas, who presented Fuera de campo in 2021 as part of a team and has now return with The Things We Love; or Jesús F. Cruz, winner of a Special Jury Mention from the jury in 2022 for A Flower in the Void, who will attempt this year to move up the list of winners with Goat Anger.

Canarias Cinema will also include the work of a new director such as the social and cultural anthropologist Alexander Cabeza Trigg. With a previous feature film on his résumé as a filmmaker, La Tramuntana ( 2020), Cabeza Trigg debuts at the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival with The Song of the Years To Come, a documentary that has been selected at DOCLISBOA or at Barcelona’s D’A Festival Cinema.

A special anniversary will be celebrated within the section thanks to the production company La Mirada Producciones, which has reached this year three decades of uninterrupted project development. La Mirada, backed by a short film trajectory that has become essential in Spain, will offer a special screening which will recover the piece that took its team to Cannes: Roulette, and the feature film with which they began their career in the format: Happy Men, two works by Roberto Santiago.

 

Program

FEATURE FILMS

A House in the Countryside by Domingo J. González (Spain, 2024, 78 min.)
The Undergrowth by Macu Machín (Spain, 2024, 72 min.)
An Inhabited Volcano by David Pantaleón and Jose Víctor Fuentes (Spain, 2023, 66 min.)
I’m Gonna Disappear by Coré Ruiz (Spain, 2024, 120 min.)

SHORT FILMS

Aitana by Marina Alberti (Spain, 2023, 19min.)
La isla errante by Pablo Borges (Spain, 2024, 18 min.)
The Last Mouflon by Shira Ukrainitz and Omar Al Abdul Razzak (Spain, 2023, 10 min.)
Meteor by Víctor Moreno (Spain, 2023, 17min.)
The Things We Love by Pablo Vilas (Spain, 2024, 17 min.)
The Song of the Years To Come by Alexander Cabeza Trigg (Spain, 2023, 23 min.)
Emerging by David Pantaleón (Spain, 2023, 4 min.)
Space Settlers by Fernando Alcántara (Spain, 2024, 11 min.)
Goat Anger by Jesús F. Cruz (Spain, 2024, 12 min.)

SPECIAL SCREENING 30 YEARS FROM “LA MIRADA”

Roulette by Roberto Santiago (Spain, 1999, 11 min.)
Happy Men by Roberto Santiago (Spain, 2001, 90 min.)