'As Bestas' triumphs at Carlos Saura's Goya

As bestas

, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, has won nine awards tonight at the 37th Goya Awards gala.

A gala “impregnated with Carlos Saura”, as the director Carla Simón had said when she learned of the death of one of her teachers.

His film grandchildren, creators such as Sorogoyen, Simón, Alberto Rodríguez (whose film

won five trophies) or Carlota Pereda, took the stage award after award, with the cinema that he loved, directed and defended.

triumphed

, which on the red carpet its scriptwriters described as indebted to Saura, to the dry film portraying society, of a rural and wild Spain, between western and drama.

Sorogoyen says that when he writes with Isabel Peña they often wonder how Saura would do it and that is how they refine his ideas.

For his film, the Goyas were awarded for film, direction, original script, leading actor (Denis Ménochet), supporting actor (Luis Zahera), Sound, Photography, Music and Editing.

Ménochet is the third foreign performer to win in his category, after Benicio del Toro and Ricardo Darín.

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The winners of the Goya Awards 2023

Model 77

, by Alberto Rodríguez, the one who competed at home, the social drama that is packaged with a prison

wrapper , won five: production management, makeup and hairdressing, special effects, art direction and costume design.

The technical awards stayed in Seville.

The actress Eulalia Ramón, widow of the director Carlos Saura, and her children Antonio and Anna collect the Goya de Honor.Jose Manuel Vidal (EFE)

Five wolves,

by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, won three Goya awards: new director, leading actress (Laia Costa) and supporting actress (Susi Sánchez).

Ruiz de Azúa has inherited the amulet that the candidates in this category have passed on.

Paula Ortiz started, who did not win with

, she passed it to Arantxa Echevarría, who did take it for

.

Simón had previously won for

, then Belén Funes, Pilar Palomero, Clara Roquet and now Ruiz de Azúa arrived.

They have understood that cinema is a community and not a competition, something very masculine in the Spanish industry.

Ménochet underlined it, probably without meaning to when she remembered that

He speaks “of the love of women in the face of the madness of men”.

The mother in the constant abyss of

, Laia Costa, took the award for protagonist, in a very clear generational change.

The candidates had previously underlined it, at the entrance, and wanted to insist that they lived it with emotion, but without the desire to retire the veteran actresses.

The producer Sandra Tapia, with the Goya for Best Film on her lap for

, insisted on that feeling of sharing a journey among all the films present.

Best vintage of Spanish cinema

Because Saura's death has coincided with the explosion of the best harvest in decades of Spanish cinema.

And the gala was up to the task.

If Saura left precise instructions because he understood that his legacy will be infinite and will illuminate subsequent generations, the Academy made numerous nods to that legacy in various ways.

From the presentation of the Spanish cinema forest, a project that repairs, in part, the carbon footprint caused by the ceremony;

the

were cast in recycled bronze, or their presentation of the awards, which were given by pairs of creators of different ages.

Even the main prize was given by the four sisters of

, who won the Oscar three decades ago.

This quartet highlighted, as the institution did not fail to point out during the gala, the presence of women in different awards: in production management, full of team leaders, or that of five films nominated for the Goya, three were headed by female directors.

On Saturday night none got the award for best director.

Just one year ago Carla Simón won the Golden Bear in Berlin, a festival that was won by… Saura.

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The 2023 Goya Awards gala, in pictures

Luckily, actually, because of talent, the ceremony will be remembered as one of the good ones.

At the height of the one presented by Antonio Banderas in the heat of the pandemic or those led by Rosa María Sardà.

Antonio de la Torre and Clara Lago verbalized a script written by a team coordinated by Fernando Pérez, screenwriter.

The dialogue of both, which gave way to the awards gala after the start dedicated to the director of

or

, was vibrant, jumping from seriousness to humor, and from the social to the cinematic.

Subsequently, both had their own monologue.

De la Torre's focused on the industry, which quickly went from Santiago Segura, because one in four Spanish cinema viewers saw a film by the comedian, to the five candidate films and to En los margínes, by Juan Diego

.

The one from Clara Lago spoke of referents and young generations, of the cinema that transforms and changes life.

Among the rest of the awards, the volcanic Laura Galán stood out, winning the trophy for revelation actress with

, by Carlota Pereda.

And she has thus completed a journey that began in 2017, when she was a teenager and met her director for coffee.

They made a short that became a long one, the actress on the trip has become a mother and has ended up taking the prize.

Another interpreter with a long career path, but little cinema behind him, won the Goya for revelation actor: Telmo Irureta, who went up with his wheelchair to talk about dignity, sex in the disabled and the emotions of having filmed

.

Behind, one of the deliverers, the actress Elena Irureta, his aunt, looked at him excitedly.

There were not many more surprises in the rest of the gala: very irregular songs, a long speech by the president, Fernando Méndez-Leite, the award for best Ibero-American film for

, which continues to walk towards the Oscar for international film, and a documentary for Labordeta , a man without more, who left

, the film about Joaquín Sabina, with a single award, the one for best song, baptized as the Leiva film.

At the end of the gala, 200 minutes after it started, the presenters pointed out: "Life without cinema exists, cinema without life does not".

That is why

... and many others will remain.

That's why Saura will remain.