Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul / Six Months In a Pink & Blue Building has carried off the Sebastiane Latino Award given by Gehitu, the Association of Gays, Lesbians, Transsexuals and Bisexuals of the Basque Country, to the feature film that best defends the demands and values of the LGBTIQA+ community. The jury has chosen this film to receive its award, considering that the screenwriter and director Bruno Santamaria Razo “invites us by means of a dance of memories, both documentary and fictional, to his autobiographical coming of age, where the stigmas of HIV that we believed to be in the past continue to form the scars of our present day”. In this line, the decision of the jury, which is joined this year by representatives of the QueerCineMad festival and the Maguey Award from the Guadalajara Internaional Film Festival, highlights that “the fear of death, of rejection, of being judged, must not be the nails that finally shut our closets”.  

The film by Santamaría Roza, which wins over the other four finalists —La virgen silenciosa / The Silent Virgin, by Xavi Sala; Nem Toda Historia de Amor Acaba em Morte / Not Every Love Story Ends in Death, by Bruno Costa; Bowels of Hell, by Gustavo Vinagre and Gurcius Gewdner; and A Paixão Segundo G.H.B. / The Passion according to G.H.B., by Gustavo Vinagre and Vinicius Couto— is set in the 90s in Mexico and focuses on an 11-year-old boy who falls in love with his best friend, as he struggles to cope with the illness of his father, diagnosed with HIV. The film had its premiere at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes and in 2022, at its project stage, participated in the Co-Production Forum where it received the Best Project Award and the Dale! Award (Development Latin America-Europe). 

In addition, the winning film of last year’s Sebastiane Latino Award will screen in different towns of Gipuzkoa during the San Sebastián Festival’s first weekend. The actress Paula Dinamarca will therefore attend the screening of La misteriosa mirada del flamenco / The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo in the towns of Zumarraga, on September 16th; Errenteria, on the 17th; Irun, on Friday 18th; and Deba, on Sunday 20th.

Meeting of LGBTIQA+ Film Festivals

On the other hand, with the objective of continuing to support Latin American LGBTIQA+ cinema, Gehitu and the Festival will organise the 12th edition of the Meeting of Ibero-American LGBTIQA+ Film Festivals with the backing of the Ministry of Equality, the departments of Culture and Cooperation, and Human Rights and Democratic Culture at Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, and San Sebastián City Council’s departments of Culture, Cultural Diversity and Inclusion. At this edition, the meeting will unite more than 20 films from eight countries: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain and Uruguay.   

Worthy of note within the regular programme organised by Gehitu and the San Sebastián Festival around the meeting, is the holding of a discussion on the body as a narrative device and the construction of identities from the fringes.

Other activities organised in the framework of the event are the presentation of Cinema and education: the cinema as a tool for reading the world, by Fernando Vera Moreno, head of the film department at IKERTZE; and the workshop Cultural centres and other tools of cultural synergy between Europe and Latin America, organised in collaboration with the AECID and guided by Eloísa Vaello Marco, Deputy Director of Cooperation and Cultural Action for Sustainable Development at the AECID.

Also programmed is the round table Peripheral identities. Representation of intersex, trans and asexual identities in the cinema, on the rendering invisible and the construction of identities on the fringes, with participants Ian de la Rosa, director of Iván & Hadoum; Asmi Ananda Molina, from GEHITU and Kaleidos, INTERSEX Organisation for diversity; and Ibai Velasco, from Asexual Community Spain.

The meeting will end with the traditional Diversity Meeting at the Photographic Society of Gipuzkoa around the work of the recently deceased multidisciplinary artist Álvaro Ledesma.

As usual, the September issue of the Gehitu Magazine will be dedicated to LGBTIQA+ films. This year, the image of the Sebastiane Award poster is the work of the artist from Pasaia, Sonia Figueirido. In the words of its maker: “The poster represents the different gazes through which queer people experience the world, specifically all those who do not fit in with the classic idea of binary gender. I decided to leave the eyes white as an example of the extent to which certain letters of the collective are rendered invisible, while maintaining the pupils inside the pieces of glass representing queer experiences. The character portrayed is, for me, someone who has fully accepted themselves. Despite being turned into a “misfit” by society, they convey dignity, confidence, power and pride”.

24 films compete for the Sebastiane Award

As usual, the San Sebastián Festival will also host presentation of the 27th Sebastiane Award, whose jury is made up of the director and producer Leire Apellaniz and the actress, director and screenwriter Abril Zamora. Said recognition, given by Gehitu to the film that best reflects the values and realities of LGBTIQA+ people from among all of the Festival sections, will have 24 candidates this year: