CREATURA, Europa Cinemas Label
Directors’ Fortnight
The Spanish feature film CREATURA, directed by Elena Martín Gimeno, has won the Europa Cinemas Label as Best European film in the 2023 Directors’ Fortnight section, it was announced today by a jury of four Europa Cinemas Network exhibitors. 2023 marks the twentieth time the Label has been awarded in Cannes.
In receiving the Label, CREATURA will benefit from promotional support from Europa Cinemas and better exhibition thanks to a financial incentive for network cinemas to include it in their programming schedule.
The jury issued the following statement: "Elena Martin Gimeno’s CREATURA is a really well written and impressive portrayal of a woman as she tries to come to terms with her sexuality and intimacy, while reflecting on her childhood and teenage experiences. This is a subject that has been covered before, but each character is so multi-layered and believable that the film is easy to relate to – both the female and the male characters. There are challenging moments but there is humour too. It is dynamic and beautifully shot. We are sure that this is a film that will touch people all around Europe, and we welcome the opportunity of encouraging the career of a very talented director, writer and actress.”
The Cannes Europa Cinemas Label Jury this year comprised Laurent Callonnec (Cinéma l'Ecran, Saint-Denis, France), Sofie Mercier (Sphinx Cinema, Ghent, Belgium), Viviane Thill (Ciné Starlight, Dudelange, Luxembourg) and Justė Vyšniauskaitė (Kaunas cinema centre Romuva, Kaunas, Lithuania).
Sold internationally by Luxbox, CREATURA is a Vilaüt Films (Spain), Lastor Media (Spain), Elastica Films (Spain), Avalon P.C. (Spain) and S/B Films (United States) production. The producers are Ariadna Dot, Marta Cruãnas, Tono Folguera, Maria Zamora, Stefan Schmitz, Emilia Fort, Ella Bishop, Pau Suris and Jake Cheetham.
The screenplay is by Elena Martín Gimeno and Clara Roquet, with photography by Alana Mejía González, sound by Oriol Donat, Laia Casanova and Leo Dolgan, production design by Sylvia Steinbrecht, editing by Ariadna Ribas (AMMAC), and music by Clara Aguilar.
The cast includes Elena Martín Gimeno (Mila), Clàudia Dalmau (Mila), Clàudia Borràs (Mila), Oriol Pla (Marcel), Alex Brendemühl (Gerard), Clara Segura (Diana), Marc Cartanyà (Gerard), Carla Linares (Diana).
Synopsis: They’re a seemingly perfect couple. They just can’t manage to have sex anymore. While attempting to explain things to her partner, Mila reflects on her sexual awakening, from adolescence back to early childhood. No real defining trauma, no single key event, but an accumulation of humiliations, things unsaid and treated as taboo, filmed starkly and non-melodramatically by the actress-filmmaker. More than a psychoanalytical session, the film is an archaeological expedition into one person’s sexuality that is the experience of many.
Elena Martín is an actress, screenwriter and director from Barcelona. Her debut as a director for which she also took the leading role, Júlia ist, was praised by the festival circuit. As an actress, she starred in Watermelon Juice, Facing the Wind or Agatha’s Friends. On TV for HBO, she was in the writer’s room of Veneno, directed two episodes of Perfect Life and created an episode of En casa.
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Press Enquiries: Charles McDonald
charles@charlesmcdonald.co.uk
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Photos credits "CREATURA": CREATURA 2023 - Luxbox