The consecration was not long in coming. The 71st edition of the San Sebastián Film Festival, to be held from September 22 to 30 in this northern Spanish city, will pay tribute to Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who will receive an honorary award, organizers announced Friday.
The actor, already holder of an Oscar and a prize for best actor at the Cannes Film Festival, "will receive the highest honorific" of the festival "at the opening gala on Friday, September 22," they said in a statement. Javier Bardem, who came for the first time to the San Sebastián festival thirty years ago for the presentation of the film Macho, will also see his face appear "on the official poster" of this 71st edition, it is specified.
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According to the organizers, he will be the sixth Spanish actor to receive this honorary award, after Antonio Banderas in 2008 and Carmen Maura in 2013. The actress and wife of Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, was also awarded by the festival in 2019. Born in the Canary Islands in 1969, Javier Bardem is the most awarded Spanish actor of his generation, but also one of the most prolific, with more than fifty films to his credit, especially in Hollywood.
The actor, married since 2010 to Penelope Cruz, received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2008 for No Country for Old Men and the Best Actor Award at Cannes in 2010 for Biutiful. In an interview with AFP, he confided in 2019 "not to receive projects" in Spain, "because people always think that I live abroad, (...), which is not reality". He has since returned to service in his country with El buen patrón , by Fernando León de Aranoa, which earned him in February 2022 the Goya Award for Best Actor.
