The Spanish Elena Martín wins the main prize of the Filmmakers’ Fortnight in Cannes

Cannes (France), May 25. The Spanish Elena Martín Gimeno won this Thursday with “Creatura”, a film that explores inhibitions and female sexuality, the Europa Cinemas Label award, the main award given within the Cannes Film Festival’s Fortnight.

The news was announced at a ceremony on the Croisette beach organized by the partners and sponsors of the Fortnight -who are the ones who present the awards of this parallel section of the famous French Riviera festival-, in which Martín Gimeno was not present, since he had to return to Barcelona.

The “Creatura” director of photography, Alana Mejía González, and the film’s production assistant, Claudia Vila, received the award on her behalf and went up on stage to read a few words that the Catalan director had prepared.

“You can’t imagine how I would like to be there, but I had to go back to Barcelona,” said Martín through the team of what is his second feature film.

The director was especially grateful for the reception in Cannes of a “risky” film that deals with complex issues about female sexuality. This award, she said, shows that writing her and asking those questions “was worth it.”

As a climax, the two members of her team reproduced an audio in which Martín herself endorsed the words of the main character in her film, whom she herself plays in some parts: “My vulva is throbbing. Merci beaucoup.”

In “Creatura”, the protagonist, Mila, does not enjoy sex with her partner, Marcel (Oriol Plá), and through scenes from her childhood and adolescence, the viewer will discover that her problem goes back to when she was just four years old and began to say, before the astonished look of her parents: “My vulva is throbbing”.

For the film, Martín (Barcelona, ​​1992) was interested in “trying to find out what happens to all of us with our bodies, with sex and with desire”, as he explained in an interview with EFE on the occasion of the film’s premiere in Cannes. .

Martín Gimeno and “Creatura” succeed Mia Hansen-Løve and “Una bonita mañana” as winners of the Label Europa Cinemas award.

Frenchman Pierre Creton also won an award at this award ceremony for the 55th edition of the Filmmakers’ Fortnight for his film “Un prince”, which won the SACD Award given by the French film critics’ union.

This is the first year of this parallel section of the Cannes Festival as “Filmmakers’ Fortnight”, instead of “Directors”, a gesture that the organizers promoted last summer out of commitment to gender equality.

Over the years, filmmakers such as George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Ken Loach and Jim Jarmusch have participated in the Fortnight -created in 1969 by the Society of Filmmakers (SRF) to discover new talents and unique works. EFE

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