Awards to promote emerging authors
The two awards conferred on two short films made by ESCAC graduates prove the great work performed by the ESCAC to train professionals of the cinema and the audiovisual.
On one hand, Pablo Larcuen got the award for the best short film of the Official Fantastic Competition Shorts section for
Elefante (2011). The awarded short film explains the story of Manuel, a poor soul. He is stuck in a monotonous job, but everything will change when the doctor diagnoses him with a strange disease: Manuel is going to turn into an elephant. With this short film Larcuen hopes to repeat the success he had with
My Invisible Friend (2010), a short film made for his third year ESCAC project, which was presented in the Sundance Film Festival and won the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2010.
On the other hand, another work made by ESCAC students,
Desvísteme (2012), directed by Javier Sanz and written by Gisela Remolins, got a special mention in the SGAE Awards Nova Autoria, conferred during the 2012 Sitges Festival. The short film is about a couple, Samuel and Eva, two strangers who share a reality: their partners are lovers. This international short film has already get the award for the best short film and for the best actress in the Lanterna Film Festival in Mexico, and soon it will be screened in three North American festivals.
Animals, the new commitment of Escándalo Films
In the 2012 Sitges Festival, a new ESCAC and Escándalo Films production was presented out of contest. This new production is
Animals (2012), the remarkable debut in directing of Marçal Forés, ex-student and now lecturer at the ESCAC. The film is about a teenager who has always has a cuddly teddy bear as best friend, until the arrival of a new student at the high school for whom he begins to feel admiration. An inexplicable death and a series of strange events will transform the meek studentʼs routine into a fantastic adventure which will take over their lives.
Forés, who has a great experience producing video clips and short films (for example
Yeah, yeah, yeah or
Friends forever), surprised the audience in Sitges with this drama thriller that mixes reality and fantasy in order to tell a teenage love story incorporating some teenage visual references, such as: comics, videogames, fantasy, manga or rock music.
Filmed in Catalan and in English, the movie was successfully presented in the last occasion of the San Sebastian Film Festival, in the Zabaltegi (New Directors) section. Its commercial premiere will take place on 26th October.
A first opportunity for the novices
Thanks to the Escándalo Films support, the ESCAC contributes to the incorporation of new producers into the cinema industry. As a result of this collaboration, different talents trained in the ESCAC made their debuts. That is the case of Marçal Forés, Kike Maíllo, who opened last year Sitges Festival with
Eva (2011), or Juan Antonio Bayona, who has just presented on this year occasion his new work,
The Impossible (2012). Five years after
The Orphanage (2007), Bayona jumps into the international scene with his second film. In
The Impossible he depicts the odyssey of a family who suffers the disaster caused by the tsunami that in 2004 devastated Thailandʼs coast. The film —technically faultless and sold all over the world— has already broken ticket sales record and has become the best premiere in Spain.
The successes got by ESCAC students and professionals signal the centre as an excellence reference in training emerging talents in the national and international cinema.
