4th edition of the BCN Sports Film Festival awards best movie prize to 'Pura Vida'

Barcelona (CNA).- The latest edition of the film festival that joins talent, culture and sport ended after showing around 70 audiovisual productions to a wide public. The films, both national and international, mixed debut films and masterpieces, all of them related to sport. The winner of the major award of the festival was the Spanish documentary ‘Pura Vida’ (The Ridge), which tells more than the complicated rescue of a mountaineer. As part of the programme there were also the ‘One to One’ meetings and the ‘Pitching advice’ presentations.

The main objectives of the festival were to unveil new film creators, to build a network for film industry professionals and to give the public the opportunity to see all kind of audiovisual productions that are seldom screened in conventional cinemas. Thus, in the effort to become an international reference, there have been over 60 films in competition selected from over 200 registered movies from 40 different countries.

Beyond this, festival organisers also wanted to bring the great values of sport to young people so more than 1,300 Catalan students have visited the festival. In the wide variety of genres and formats, fiction or not, the films shown how failures became lessons, how fears were transformed into personal challenges and how solidarity, friendship and courage can achieve major goals. As one of the jury members, Roland Nguyen, said “one clean drug exists, one which mixes dedication, dreams and effort; this clean drug is sport.”

This year the festival jury included renowned figures from both the fields of sport and cinema: Roland NGuyen, member of the French Académie des Césars; Mayuko Fujiki, head coach of the Spanish synchronised swimming national team; Isabel Bosch, member of the Direction Board of the Catalan Public Television Broadcaster; Jose Antonio Montero, former basketball player; and Fernando Trullols Santiago, winner of the Goya for the Best Short Film in 2012. They awarded a total of twelve productions in several categories and according to Maite Fandos, president of one of the promoters of the festival, the Barcelona Olympic Foundation, “every year the level is higher and all that have been seen during the festival are of a very good quality”.

International winners

Apart from the Award for best Catalan production which went to ‘Camí a Alaska’ (Going to Alaska) by Gerard Mills, all the rest of the films were from other nationalities. For instance, ‘Pura Vida’ (The Ridge), the winner of the festival and the most viewed documentary in Spain in 2012, is a Spanish production with international figures; the award for best Documentary production was for the French film ‘Play’, by Manuel Herrero; the award for best Fiction Film went to the hair-raising ‘Balance’ by Mark Ram, from Netherlands; and the Award for best short film was for ‘Freestyle life’ by Adam Palenta.

With special guests

During the closing ceremony, presented by the Catalan sports journalist Jordi Robirosa, a world icon of scuba diving from Barcelona Eduard Admetlla, received a special Honour Award for his role in the film ‘De la bellesa i del temps’(About beauty and time). He surprised the whole auditorium with his vitality at the age of 89 and with his story: “I didn’t want to die without seeing that cave”, the underwater cave where the production has been filmed.

The festival also received guests of great stature, such as Jerry Rothwell, the director of ‘Town of runners’, or Frenchmen Gilles Pérez and Gilles Rof, directors of the film ‘Les Rebelles du foot’ (Rebels of football). Agustí Argelich, director of the festival, spoke of the great chance that the festival offers to share with film-makers and actors all the stories shown on the screen.