GEHITU, the Basque association of gays, lesbians, transsexuals and bisexuals and, on its behalf, the Jury of the Sebastiane Award, made up of members of said collective, Igor Blanco, Joaquín Garrido, Joseba Errekalde, Juanjo Arin, Lander Bergés and Nicolás Subirán, have decided to give the XVIII SEBASTIAN award to the film

“120 BATTEMENTS PAR MINUTE (120BPM) / BATTEMENTS PAR MINUTE” (2017) by the director Robin Campillo,

for being a film which, without omitting recovery for all society of the memory of gays and AIDS, defends as values: commitment, the fight against injustice, courage, the overcoming of odds and joy. It also talks about intimacy and love, that strength which defies labels.

For lending historical visibility to the lonely fight of young people against AIDS in the eighties and nineties, backing one another and raising awareness against the authorities that should have protected them and the society that should have cared for them. Because with their commitment until death they saved lives.

Because Robin Campillo and his team show that it is possible to make cinema of fine technical, narrative, plastic and ideological manufacture and to reach all kinds of audiences.

• It shows the defence from marginalisation of gays and sick people stigmatised against power and indifference. But Campillo doesn’t want to forget the role of women as fundamental and passionate, the drug addicts, the prostitutes and haemophiliacs, and elements of enormous importance in the struggle, such as the women who took up the cause of their children.
  
• “120 battements par minute” moves at a thrilling rhythm intercalating profound and intense political and social debates with powerful and beautiful protest actions, without forgetting something which is essential in the gay culture: partying, dancing and sex.
  
• Because Robin Campillo and Philippe Mangeot don’t forget in their screenplay to tell a beautiful story of love from its birth. And they dare to reveal the intimacy and love of a gay couple where there are no imposed conventionalities with a realism not often seen in the cinema.

Through all of this they show that love emerges due to all of the molecules of copulation that float in this marvellous film while shouting out a warning to the new generations, telling them not to let down their guard against AIDS, as they are doing, once again, in the face of the indifference of society and power.

The jury of the 18th Sebastiane Award has decided to give a special mention to “Soldatii. Proveste din Ferentari (Soldiers. Story from Ferrentari) by Ivana Mladenovic, for showing a doubly invisible minority, gypsy and homosexual, which all of us abandon to their contradictions.