Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez have 9 nominations for Goya Awards 2021 for the Cuban-Spanish documentary A media voz

December 7, 2020

The documentary A media voz, by Cuban filmmakers Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez, which won the Silver Biznaga for Best Director in the Documentary section of the 23rd Málaga Film Festival, has received 9 nominations for next year's Goya Awards for: Best Film, Best Debut Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Sound, Best Special Effects, and Best Documentary Film.

Directed by graduates of the International School of Film, Radio and Television of San Antonio de los Baños, Patricia Pérez Fernández and Heidi Hassan, with sound design by Sergio Borrás, screenplay advice from department head Xenia Rivery and advice from Carlos Quintela, a directing graduate. A media voz is a wonderful exercise in self-referential cinema that follows the relationship of two childhood friends, EICTV students who reunite after 15 years of separation. The documentary arises from the need to reconnect: their friendship, their roots, and their love for cinema; but with a powerful universal feeling that has managed to move audiences from all over the world.

Now, members of The Academy of Cinematic Arts and Sciences of Spain must see it and vote for it to achieve official nominations for the Goya Awards that will be held on February 27th of next 2021.

"It is a kind of autobiography of those who maintain friendship despite physical distance. It has already gone through 10 international events," tweeted Alexis Triana, director of communication for the Ministry of Culture.

This autobiographical documentary was created through audiovisual correspondence between the two Cuban filmmakers, who have been friends since childhood, but migration to Europe separated them for 15 years.

With the screenplay, cinematography direction, and general direction of the audiovisual by both filmmakers, the material reconstructs memories of home and shares the current experiences of each one in the countries where they live.

A media voz is a co-production between Spain, France, Cuba, and Switzerland, and has traveled to different international events where it has been awarded and received acceptance from critics.

At the most recent edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, it was awarded the Coral Prize for Best Documentary Feature Film.

These women attempt to find themselves and each other again through cinematographic practice. The result is a journey about friendship, forgiveness, displacement, childlessness, and cinema, according to the official site of the renowned Cuban festival.

Similarly, it was winner of the Best Feature Film Award at the XXII edition of the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), in Holland.

Recently it was news its competition, along with Agosto, a Cuban-Costa Rican film directed by Armando Capó, in the official section of the 24 Lima Film Festival, which is taking place virtually due to the health emergency of Covid-19, and where A media voz is the only Cuban production competing in the documentary category.

Among those nominated for the Goya Awards also appears the Cuban film Buscando a Casal. Regarding this, its director has stated: "That a film that cost us so much to make and that we waited so long to make is a candidate for the Goyas is already a prize; I am happy for the team, for everyone involved, for Jorge Luis Sánchez, who spent many years pushing the project forward, and for the poet Julián de Casal," emphasized Guerrero.

The feature film "Buscando a Casal" is set in the second half of the 19th century and addresses passages from the life of Cuban poet Julián de Casal, one of the initiators of the Modernist movement in Ibero-American poetry.

Casal died at age 29 when at a dinner one of those present made a joke and a fit of laughter caused him a fatal rupture of an aneurysm.