At this year’s festival, remarkable for diversity of genre, the apocalyptic thriller Tres dias (Before the Fall), produced by Antonio Perez, won the Biznaga de Oro for the best film. This work, the first to be made by its director, Francisco Javier Gutierrez, is part of an interesting project, “Nuevos Cinestas Andaluces” (“New Andalusian Filmmakers”), through which Antonio Perez and Antonio Banderas (co-producer of the film) aim to produce the operas primas (first works) of promising new Andalusian filmmakers. The film Todos estamos invitados, directed by Manuel Gutierrez Aragon and produced by Enrique Cerezo and Pedro Costa, won the Special Jury Prize. The audience’s favourite was, naturally, a comedy: Fuera de carta, which won many rounds of applause on the day of its premiere at the festival, and starred the actor Javier Camara, who also won the best actor award. The actress and director Silvia Munt won the best director prize for the intimate family drama Pretextos which she wrote and acted in herself. The best actress award went to an Andalusian, Ana Fernandez from Seville, for her performance in Bienvenidos a Farewell-Gutmann, playing an aggressive executive prepared to fight to the death to obtain her recently deceased boss’s job. Honorific prizes were also awarded to the actress Concha Velasco and to the director Mario Camus, and retrospectives of their film careers were included in the festival schedule.

www.festivaldemalaga.com/2008/