Directors, actresses, technicians… 10 women in Spanish cinema to follow closely

Some are nominated for the Goya Awards that will be held in Valladolid on February 10, others are not.

But they all have something in common: they are the names to keep in mind in Spanish-language cinema this year.

From debut actresses like Xinyi Ye—nominated for her role in

Chinas

—to reference techniques like Laura Pedro, responsible for the striking visual effects of

The Snow Society

.

And voices like the Argentine director María Zanetti, who is now premiering

Germany,

a debut film destined to become one of the titles of the year.

Sandra Tapia, the creative producer of 'As bestas' to 'Robot Dreams'

JORDI VIDAL / GETTY IMAGES

“Cinema has to happen in theaters,” she said convinced and excited in February of last year with the Goya for best film for

As bestas

in her hands.

It is one of the films that has given the most recognition to this Girona native, thanks to her partners in the production company Arcadia Motion Pictures.

They were also the ones who believed in Pablo Berger with his silent, black and white story of

Snow White

.

And with this director they will go to the Goya again this year (and also to the Oscars) with another silent but animated film,

Robot Dreams

.

Tapia soon saw that she wanted to be in the executive production, from the beginning to the end of each film, making the decisions, getting creatively involved.

In her case it's something personal, not just business.

She will soon release

Little Loves,

the second title by another filmmaker she discovered, Celia Rico.

Elena Martín, believing in a feminine, healing, brave and transgressive cinema

Gianluca Battista

She is the youngest, by far, among the candidates for best direction at this year's Goya Awards (Valladolid, February 24).

With her film

De ella Creatura

de ella she already won the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes last year ("I can't believe it was an award that Mia Hansen-Love won," she said then, ecstatic).

Although she already directed

Júlia ist

(2017), as it was a shared project, she considers this her debut feature.

A film that breaks the taboos of female sexuality and intimacy, that stirs and moves those who see it from a place that we had not seen until now, from honest reflection and with a healing vocation.

Since

Ágata's Friends

(2015), as an actress, Martín has positioned herself as a voice of her generation who, with

Creatura,

has confirmed how much she still has to say.

Xinyi Ye, when the vocation finds you without work

Borja B. Hojas / GETTY IMAGES

He responded to a casting announcement on the social network WeChat, he wanted to do something with his life and overcome his shyness.

She had never considered being an actress until that moment.

Arantxa Echevarria

(Carmen y Lola)

chose her for one of the relevant roles in Chinas, a portrait, from the Usera neighborhood, of the migrant community from the Asian country.

Playing Claudia, her character, Xinyi found similarities with her own life experience, also raised between two cultures, between her parents' bazaar, in which she sometimes helped, and a Spanish school.

Two languages, two ways of seeing life, but she brought to it the sensitivity that was less Spanishized than her.

During the filming, in addition, she discovered a new passion and, she trusts, the profession to which she will dedicate her future.

Now, at 22 years old, she studies acting, she shares a representative with Anna Castillo and Najwa Nimri and aspires to the Goya for best new actress.

Sara Becker, the first Chilean actress nominated for a Goya Award

Shawn Goldberg/GETTY IMAGES

Xinyi Ye's partner in the nomination for best new actress, also 22 years old, Sara Becker, on the other hand, always knew she wanted to be an actress.

“I am certain that my life is acting.

I can't imagine doing anything else.

Since I was a child, it was clear to me,” she says.

At the age of 11 she started working on television, in the series The Return, while she continued her training.

On the small screen she has mainly developed her career during this decade that now opens internationally with her role as the luminous and hopeful María Margarita, protagonist of The Movie Teller, by Lone Scherfig (An Education), a lover of cinema as she.

Laura Pedro, visual effects supervisor or the talent of invisibility

JUAN NAHARRO / GETTY IMAGES

“The best visual effects are the ones you can't see.”

That's what Laura Pedro and her union say.

In

The Snow Society,

her second film with JA Bayona, after

A Monster Comes to See Me

(where she debuted as a supervisor), her work is in more than 1,000 shots, but you would hardly identify one of them.

She was there, in the Andes, taking photographs of the snow-capped peaks that later seem real and claustrophobic to us in the recreation of the 1972 plane crash. She aspires to win her third Goya (in 2019, for

Superlópez

, she was the first woman to win the for best special effects), has received the European Film Academy award and is close to the Oscar.

She came to the profession by chance, after suffering an accident with her friend Aida Domènech (Dulceida) and not being able to prepare for her exams, and she quotes Death suits you as well as her fetish film in terms of effects.

Cristina Trenas, an excessive passion and ambition for cinema

JUAN NAHARRO / GETTY IMAGES

With a small and very experimental film,

New York Shadows,

in 2014 she became the first woman nominated for best cinematography, a profession she discovered at home, her father is the cinematographer Tote Trenas.

Since then, her career has opened, multiplied and expanded.

As a founding partner of the production company Little Spain, together with C. Tangana, Santos Bacana and María Rubio, she signs video clips (with Grammy), advertising

spots

and now... documentaries, her true passion.

For

This Inordinate Ambition,

which follows her partner, Tangana, on her

El Madrileño tour,

she is once again nominated for the Goya, now as a producer.

She has also co-produced the short

Semana 12

,

alongside Isabel Delclaux, which breaks the silence regarding spontaneous abortion.

They say that she has seen so many films that “someday Boyero will recognize her talent for criticism.”

Alexandra Masangkay, for diverse Spanish cinematography

Carlos Alvarez / GETTY IMAGES

Born in Barcelona, ​​daughter of Filipino parents, for Alexandra Masangkay, acting was never an option.

In fact, it all started with music and it was not until 2016 that she debuted in her first feature film,

1898. The Last of the Philippines.

In

El hoyo

and

Emperador Code

(again with Luis Tosar) she had more relevant roles;

and this year she will make a triplet on the big screen, first in

Valley of Shadows,

by Salvador Calvo, alongside Miguel Herrán;

in

Rich Flu,

alongside Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Timothy Spall;

and in

Control Room,

by Luis Berdejo, with Óscar Casas and Aitor Luna.

She has been Nala in the musical

The Lion King

and is co-founder of a studio for actors and actresses with the aim of discovering this profession to other young people who, like her, due to their status or roots, did not even see it as an option.

Lila Avilés, the party of a Mexican director who could reach the Oscar

OMAR TORRES / GETTY IMAGES

A simple and universal premise: preparing a surprise birthday party for the father in an advanced state of cancer.

The point of view is that of Sol, her daughter, an eight-year-old girl who does not seem to understand everything that happens around her or understands it in the best way it could be.

It is

Tótem

(in theaters on February 23), second feature film by Mexican director Lila Avilés, with which she has collected multiple awards from more than 50 festivals around the world and even made it into the Oscar pools for best non-language film. English, a nomination that in the end did not arrive.

“One of the best films of the year,” according to Manohla Dargis, chief critic of the

New York Times

.

She studied performing arts and theater was where she began her career only as a preliminary step to what she always dreamed of being: a filmmaker.

With the reception that her second film has had in the United States, it is likely that it will represent a leap to an international league.

Zoe Bonafonte, one of the debuts that will be the most talked about in 2024

D.R.

“I am convinced that Spanish cinema is going to discover a name for the future: Zoe Bonafonte.”

This is how Marcel Barrena (Mediterráneo)

talks about it ,

who directed it in his first film,

El 47,

about the neighborhood movement in Torre Baró, Barcelona, ​​which occurred in the seventies, one of the most popular Spanish titles for 2024 and in which the (almost) debutant actress shares the screen with veterans like Eduard Fernández or David Verdaguer.

Bonafonte began her training in dance and musical theater and debuted in front of the cameras in the series

Amar es para siempre

and

Escándalo, relato de una obsession

.

Listening to Barrena, she could be among the breakout candidates at the Goya next year.

María Zanetti: the new passionate and emotional voices of Latin American cinema

Inaki Luis

The death of her brother, the digitization of VHS tapes and photos from her childhood and adolescence were the trigger for this Argentine director to find in her nineties adolescence the beginning of her debut feature,

Germany

(in theaters on February 9), a journey towards the maturity of its protagonist Lola (newcomer Maite Aguilar), focused on going on a study exchange to the country of the title, while coping with the crises in the family home caused by her sister's bipolar disorder.

Mental illness and nostalgia for that past are key in this moving film, released at the San Sebastian Festival, with which Zanetti has already made a name for himself among the new wave of Latin American filmmakers, using his life as inspiration and background. , because she even filmed in the house that she lived with her family when she was young in the nineties.