Una zona ajardinada demasiado tranquila para mí, by Alejandro Vázquez San Miguel, and How to Save a Dead Friend, by Marusya Syroechkovskaya, winners at Documenta Madrid 2023

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Una zona ajardinada demasiado tranquila para mí
  • Una zona ajardinada demasiado tranquila para mí, by Alejandro Vázquez San Miguel, has won the Jury Award for Best National Film, worth 10,000 €, "for being a space of solitude, of memory and affection that touches you."
  • In the international competitive section, How to Save a Dead Friend, by Russian filmmaker Marusya Syroechkovskaya, won the Jury Prize for Best International Film, worth 10,000 €, "for proposing a cross between life and cinema, to the point of blurring the boundaries between the two and opening up to vulnerability without falling into miserabilism."
  • Bloom, by Helena Girón y Samuel M. Delgado and Knit´s Island, by French filmmakers Quentin L'helgoualc'h, Guilhem Causse and Ekiem Barbier, have been awarded the National and International Fugas Awards, respectively, endowed with 5,000 € each, prizes that recognize innovation and creative risk.
  • The CineZeta Young Jury Award went to Aqueronte, by Manuel Muñoz Rivas.
  • The jury has chosen Turismo de Guerra. De la guerra también se sale by Kikol Grau as the winner of the Corte Final Award endowed 4,000 €; and a Special Mention was given to Adolescencia infinita, by Víctor Soho.
  • The International Audience Award went to Chienne de rouge, by Yamina Zoutat and the National Audience Award went to Karpeta urdinaki, by Ander Iriarte.

Documenta Madrid, the International Film Festival of the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport of the Madrid City Council, has announced tonight at the Azcona Hall of Cineteca Madrid the winning films of its 20th edition. The awards were read by the Programming Committee formed by Javier H. Estrada, Ruth Somalo, Karina Solórzano and Ivan Granovsky, accompanied by Luis E. Parés, artistic director of Cineteca Madrid, and the juries of the categories in competition.

National Competition. Best Film and Fugas
The jury of the National Competition, formed by Ane Rodríguez Armendáriz, curator and programmer in the field of visual arts and cultural manager; Eugenia Mumenthaler, film producer; and Miguel Ribeiro, Portuguese film programmer and producer, have awarded Una zona ajardinada demasiado tranquila para mí, by Alejandro Vázquez San Miguel (Madrid, 1976), the Jury Prize for Best National Film, endowed with 10,000 €. The jury, in its deliberation, declared that "a close and intimate space is drawn through the gestures of everyday life. It is a space of solitude, and also of memory and affection. This is where the story comes to us, not only of Choni, but also of so many others."

The same jury awarded the €5,000 Fugas Prize for innovation and willingness to cross borders to the film Bloom, by Galician director Helena Girón and Canarian filmmaker Samuel M. Delgado. In the words of the jury, "to approach the possible representations of popular stories, this film surprised us by summoning tensions between analog and digital, geographical memory and technological transformation."

International Competition. Best Film and Fugas
The Jury Prize for Best International Film, endowed with €10,000, went to How to Save a Dead Friend, by Marusya Syroechkovskaya (Russia, 1989). The jury, composed of Ali Essafi, filmmaker, visual artist and curator, born in Morocco; Pablo Martínez Fernández, Margarita Salas Researcher at the Institute of History of the CSIC; and Mara Polgovsky, director and film producer of Mexican nationality, stressed that this award recognizes "her commitment to cinema as a form of counter-power in all its complexity. The film proposes a crossover between life and cinema, to the point of blurring the boundaries between the two and opening up to vulnerability without falling into miserabilism. Through its images, cinema becomes a space of convergence between suffering, love, life, death and survival".

The same jury awarded the Fugas Prize for innovation and willingness to cross borders, worth €5,000, to the film Knit's Island, by French filmmakers Quentin L'helgoualc'h, Guilhem Causse and Ekiem Barbier. In the words of the jury, this film has been awarded "for opening a space towards an absolutely innovative medium and discourse in the documentary tradition, and through this to create a virtual ethnography of contemporary reality."

CineZeta Youth Award
Aqueronte, by Manuel Muñoz Rivas (Seville, 1978), received the CineZeta Youth Award for Best National Film, endowed with a diploma and awarded by the CineZeta team, a Cineteca Madrid program that incorporates ten young people under 26 years of age in their first experience as film programmers. This jury, which in the current edition was composed of Agnès Hayden, Andrés Tebas Moreno, Brenda Lucía (Mia) Báscones Cornejo, Guillermo Hormigo López, Jorge Ramírez García, Marta Martínez Rodríguez, Nicolás Martín Ruíz, Noelia Plata Barrueo, Pablo Caldera and Sandra del Moral Abolafia, noted in its deliberation that the film has "the ability to abstract space and time to document a state of trance from the point of view of a shared species. It is a film that plays with the myths of transit and death, fusing identity and landscape."

Corte Final Award
In Corte Final, the section aimed at films in the final stages of Spanish production or co-production, the jury was formed by film programmer José Luís Cienfuegos; Brazilian distributor and audiovisual producer Silvia Cruz; and filmmaker, writer and cultural manager Tania Balló Colell. This jury awarded the Corte Final Award, endowed with €4,000, to Turismo de Guerra. De la guerra también se sale, by Kikol Grau (Barcelona, 1971), because with "a provocative eagerness, radical and militant aesthetics, it proposes a profound reflection on the relationship that we have with the conflicts of the past from the present." 

The same jury awarded a Special Mention with a diploma to Adolescencia infinita, by Víctor Soho (Vigo, 1999) "in recognition of his creative ambition, open to new languages, innovative and surprising."

Chienne de rouge and Karpeta urdinaki, audience's favorite films
The festival's spectators, by voting in theaters after the screenings, have contributed to the list of winners with their choice of the best film in each competition. The Cineteca Madrid Audience Award in the International Competition, endowed with 1,000 €, went to Chienne de rouge, by Swiss Yamina Zoutat; and the Cineteca Madrid Audience Award in the National Competition, also endowed with 1,000 €, went to Karpeta urdinaki, by Ander Iriarte (Oiartzun, Guipúzcoa, 1986).

Documenta Madrid 2023
Documenta Madrid, the International Film Festival of the Madrid City Council, organized by the Area of Culture, Tourism and Sport, international meeting point between creators, professionals and public, has reached its twentieth edition in 2023, which was held from May 3 to 7. Throughout its twenty years of life, the festival has maintained its commitment to an open and plural way of understanding the documentary genre, accompanying and encouraging new models and authors, allying itself with the impulse of discovery that characterizes this film genre, and rewarding innovation and good work.

In addition, until May 13, the retrospective Better to be than to obey. The cinema of Narimane Mari, dedicated to the work of this Algerian filmmaker, continues at the Reina Sofia Museum. Her filmography is characterized by transcending the boundaries between documentary, experimental cinema and fiction, as well as by exploring the limits of perception and dealing with the ability of cinema to shape reality, Documenta Madrid 2023 is organized by Cineteca Madrid with funding from the Government of Spain (ICAA). It has the Reina Sofía Museum, Filmoteca Española and ECAM as collaborating venues, and the collaboration of Madrid Film Office.

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