09/04/2018 - The first edition of the international gathering, held in Madrid last week, has garnered a warm welcome from the public, critics and the media alike

The Breadwinner [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], the second feature by filmmaker Nora Twomey (The Secret of Kells [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Didier Brunner
interview: Tomm Moore
interview: Viviane Vanfleteren
film profile]), was co-produced by Angelina Jolie: it is a movie – funded by the USA, Canada, Ireland and Luxembourg – which “is wonderfully crafted, combines fiction and reality, and allows us to see the world through a girl’s eyes”. For this reason, on Saturday it was announced as the winner of the first edition of the Women’s International Film Festival, which was held from 3-8 April in various locations across central Madrid. The jury – comprising Debra Zimmerman (CEO of the organisation and US film distributor Women Make Movies), María Rubín (head of Spanish film at Movistar Plus+) and producer-director Tomás Cimadevilla (Torremolinos 73 [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) – was tasked with choosing the winner from among 27 fiction and non-fiction films made by women from all over the world over the last three years. Surprisingly, the magnificent winning animated film still has no Spanish distributor. 

In its own words, the Women’s International Film Festival, co-directed by Carlota Álvarez Basso and Diego Más Trelles (Sexo, maracas y chihuahuas), aims “to be a festival promoted by women and men who want to lend visibility to the cinematographic work of an important part of the population that does not always manage to reach the public under the same conditions as men do”. What promises to be an unmissable rendezvous on the Spanish capital’s festival calendar opened its first-ever edition with a screening of the British documentary Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lorna Tucker
film profile] by Lorna Tucker and with the handing out of the Award for an Outstanding Career in the Film Industry to producer Belén Atienza, Juan Antonio Bayona’s right-hand woman (A Monster Calls [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Juan Antonio Bayona
film profile]).

The gathering, which dedicated its Focus section to the Swedish film industry, came to a close with a screening of the French movie Number One [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], helmed by Tonie Marshall and starring Emmanuelle Devos. In it, Devos breathes life into a brilliant engineer who is striving to become the manager of a company listed on the stock exchange, which has so far been an exclusively male position. The film will go on general release in Spain on 25 May, distributed by Wanda Vision. 

To discover the programme and more information about the festival, including its screenings and various activities, click here.

(Translated from Spanish)