Belgian legal drama We Believe You took the 22nd Seville European Film Festival by storm, winning the Golden Giraldillo Award for Best Picture as well as two more Official Selection Awards as the Andalusian event concluded from November 7th to 15th.
The debut film by co-directors Charlotte DeVillers and Arnaud Dufay appeared in the Berlinale’s New Perspectives category, winning Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress for Myriem Akediou, and cementing its status as one of Europe’s discoveries of the year.
Set almost entirely inside a Belgian courthouse, the film centers on a nearly hour-long custody hearing played in real time, and centers on Alice, a mother fighting to protect her children from their father in a system where all eyes are on her.
Seller: The Party Film Sales
We Believe You, produced by Belgium’s Mackintosh Films, is being handled worldwide by Paris-based The Party Film Sales, which aims to leverage Berlin and Seville’s high profile to run the autumn festival and awards. In Spain, it will be co-distributed by arthouse labels Filmin and Karma Film.
The Seville jury, presided over by veteran producer and former Edinburgh Film Festival head Linda Miles and comprising US executive Bonnie Volland, Spanish writer-director Laura Heuman and exhibitor Nacho Martínez-Uceros, praised the film’s courage in turning a custody hearing into a class action lawsuit. De Villers and Dufay’s script was also praised for building tension through subtle gestures and silences, gradually revealing the weight of the trauma behind the incident. Akediu’s performance as Alice was praised for its combination of restraint and raw emotion, and the judges chose her turn to “cling on” to viewers and drive the film.
“We Believe You” also won Seville’s Amma Women in Focus Award, given by the Spanish Association of Women in the Audiovisual Sector, in the same award as “The Girls We Want,” a summer camp drama set in Marseille directed by French filmmaker Princia Calle, and was shown on the sidebar of Seville’s Alambramiento after the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight premiere.
“DJ Ahmet”: Youth drama
Produced by After Hours Productions and distributed by France’s SND, Car’s debut features a largely non-professional teenage cast and explores desire, power and masculinity in a working-class neighborhood.
The festival’s Grand Jury Prize went to “DJ Ahmet,” the debut feature film by North Macedonian director Georgi M. Unkowski.
A European co-production from Lyon and Berlin-based Films Boutique, this coming-of-age drama follows a 15-year-old boy from a conservative rural community as he discovers electronic music. Seville also awarded Best Actor to newcomer Arif Jakup in “DJ Ahmet,” praising his fresh, effortless performance that balances awkwardness with budding confidence.
The award for best director went to Palestinian-American filmmaker Cherien Davis for the decades-spanning epic drama “All That’s Left of You,” which she wrote, directed and co-starred in. The international Match Factory film follows three generations of a Palestinian family from 1948 to 2022. The judges praised Davis’s “ambitious direction” and “sensitive look at trauma.”
On the film front, Daniel Vidal Torce’s debut film La Anatomy of the Horses, co-produced with Andalusian film company Playa Chica, won a double award, with Angelo Facchini taking home cinematography and Juan Pablo Garay taking home art.
An exploration of a timeless revolution and its modern equivalent, the film was praised for its detailed, poetic imagery and visual world influenced by ritual, linking landscape, mythology, and memory.
The Swiss hospital thriller Late Shift, written and directed by Petra Volpe, has won the Hansjörg Weisblich Editing Award. The film, Switzerland’s entry for the international feature Oscar, uses long takes and tight cuts to maintain tension while keeping its human core, according to reviews.
DJ Ahmet
“DJ Ahmet” (Courtesy of Cinema Futura)
Puerta America encourages international feature races
At the Puerta América Awards in Seville, which spotlights films that represent their countries in the international feature race, the jury chose Norwegian family drama “Sentimental Value,” directed by Joachim Trier.
Winner of this year’s Cannes Grand Prix, the film, produced by Mer Film and distributed internationally by MK2 Films, depicts two sisters reuniting with their once-estranged film director father as he makes a late-career comeback.
Besides the main competition in Seville, the Embrujo sidebar (formerly Las Nuevas Olas) also won the Best Picture award for French-Egyptian director Namir Abdel Messe’s autofiction “Life After Siham,” which offers a trip down memory lane for movie fans.
On the other hand, the Audience Award in the European Film Academy selection section went to the French-Belgian co-produced drama “Little Amelie,” based on Amelie Norton’s memoir “The Nature of the Rain,” which depicts her childhood in Japan.
“Emotional value”
Kasper Tuxen / Mubi
Highlight Seville’s ambitions
This year’s Giraldillo of Honor, a tribute to this event, underlined Seville’s ambition to stand at a crossroads in the history and present of European cinema. The festival paid homage to four stalwarts: Juliette Binoche, Costa-Gavras, Jim Sheridan, and local hero Alberto Rodriguez.
Rodriguez had a front row role at this year’s competition, receiving the Giraldillo of Honor at the opening night’s gala, a tribute not only to his own career but also to the generation that started the so-called Nuevo Cine Andalus. The director of “Marshland,” “Group 7” and “Prison 77” positioned the honor as a “communal” award for the filmmakers who began filming on the fringes of the Spanish industry in the ’90s and turned Seville into a production hub.
The festival doubled down on that respect with a special screening of Rodriguez’s new thriller Los Tigres and part of his Movistar Plus+ original series The Anatomy of a Moment, highlighting his status as the city’s most influential contemporary filmmaker and an important bridge between local talent and Spain’s national industry.
That role will be shared with Rodriguez’s longtime co-screenwriter Rafael Cobos, who is currently making his feature directorial debut, Golpes, in Seville. Backed by Galicia’s Vaca Films and co-produced with France’s Playtime, the thriller set in the 1980s had its world premiere in competition at Seminci in Valladolid, before bowing in Seville, where the film won the Juan Antonio Bermúdez Award for Best Fiction in the Panorama Andalus sidebar.
Seville’s cutting-edge industry
On the industry side, Seville has built on its star momentum, strengthening the Frame Seville program and helping turn the event into a true fall market attraction. Frame hosted over 30 activities including roundtables, masterclasses, pitching sessions, workshops and targeted networking, bringing together a wide mix of producers, distributors, broadcasters and streamers from across Europe.
Seville hosted Future Frame in collaboration with European Film Promotion, giving four emerging directors a second platform after Karlovy Vary. The festival has also entered into a strategic alliance with RTVE as its public broadcasting partner.
His professional footprint will extend beyond closing night. Seville is currently repositioning the city as an important European hub, where red carpet prestige, talent discovery and contract signing take place in the same landscape, with the European Film Academy’s nomination ceremony resuming on November 18th at the Real Alcazar.
Complete list of winners of the 22nd Seville European Film Festival:
official selection
Giraldillo de Oro Award for Best Film
“We Believe in You” Charlotte DeVillers, Arnaud Dufay
Jury Grand Prize
“DJ Ahmet” George M. Ankowski
Puerta America Award
Joachim Trier “Sentimental Value”
direction
Sherian Davis “All That’s Left of You”
Screenplay: Charlotte DeVillers, Arnaud Dufay “We Believe You”
actress
Miryem Akediu: “We believe in you”
actor
Arif Jakup “DJ Ahmet”
edit
Hansjörg Weisblich “Late Shift”
Cinematography
Angelo Facchini “La anatomia de los caballos”
art direction
Juan Pablo Garay “La anatomia de los caballos”
Official selection short films
live-action
“In Her Arms” Roman Volosevich
animation
“Birds from within” Laura Annaholly
Embrujo
Best movie award
“Life After Siham” Namir Abdel Meseh
Rampa
Best movie award
“Father’s Shadow” Akinola Davis Jr.
alumbramiento
Best movie award
“Renovation” Gabriele Urboneite
Panorama Andalus
Juan Antonio Bermudez Best Film Award
“Golpes” Rafael Cobos
Best Documentary Award
“Tiempo Entre Olivos” Fanny de la Chica
Special Jury Award
“The sea is not Falta” Moises Salama
Rosario Valpuesta Best Short Film
“Alli, Lejos de Aqui” Pedro Gondi
Rosario Valpuesta Special Award for Artistic Contribution
“Las Desqueridas” Charlie Garcia Villalba, Gonzalo Luis Esteban
Other prizes
acecan jury
Best Feature Film Screenplay (Ex aequo)
Fernando Navarro, Rafael Cobos “Golpes”
Mauricio Angulo and Julio Muñoz “Los pinceles de la baronesa”
Best Short Film Screenplay (Ex aequo)
Pablo Cueto “Axion, Figuracion”
Alvaro Amate, Jaime Tragas “Discordia”
AC/E Best Spanish Film Director
“Els mals noms” Mark Ortiz
AAMMA Women in Focus Award (formerly aequo)
“We Believe You” Charlotte DeVillers, Arnaud Dufay “The Girls We Want” Princia Kerr
Queer Ocaña Award
“Els mals noms” Mark Ortiz
Cinefilos del Futuro Award
“Bella” Manuel H. Martin, Amparo Martinez Barco
European Junior Award
“Falcon Express” Benoît Duffis, Jean-Christian Tassy
University of Seville European Novel Film Screenplay Award
first prize
“Eternal Infinity” Alejandro Luis Padin
runner-up
“Nadie quiere enterrarte” Matias Garcia Martin
Won the Audience Award for Best Film at the EFA Selection.
“Little Amelie” Mairis Valade, Lian Cho Han
