- Isabel Coixet, who was recently presented with Spain’s National Film Award, will screen her latest feature film It Snows in Benidorm after the opening ceremony of the forthcoming 65th edition of the festival
- The Catalan director and scriptwriter will also receive the Festival’s “Spike of Honour”, which will be presented to her at the opening gala to be held on Saturday, October 24
The film, which screens out of competition in the festival’s Official Section, has been produced by El Deseo, the production company owned by the Almodóvar brothers (Pedro and Agustín), and its leading cast includes Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner, Secrets & Lies), Sarita Chouldhury (The Hunger Games, Lady in the Water), Carmen Machi (Spanish Affairs, The Open Door), Ana Torrent (Thesis, Yoyes) and Pedro Casablanc (B, Mar de plástico).
A thriller written and directed by Coixet, It Snows in Benidorm stars Peter Riordan, a lonely, maniacal and methodical man obsessed with weather phenomena. When he is given early retirement at the Manchester bank where he has worked all his life, he decides to visit his brother, Daniel, who lives in Benidorm (Spain). Upon arriving in the city, he learns that his brother has gone missing. Daniel is the owner of a burlesque club where Alex works —a mysterious woman who exerts a powerful fascination over him. Peter and Álex try to find out what happened to Daniel with the help of a female police officer obsessed with the British poet and writer Sylvia Plath, who spent a few weeks in Benidorm in the 1950s as part of her honeymoon.
Including the participation of Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE, Movistar + and ViacomCBS International Studios, as well as the collaboration of the Benidorm Film Office, the film will be distributed by Bteam and its theatrical release will take place on November 13.
With It Snows in Benidorm, Isabel Coixet will be kickstarting the Valladolid Film Week for the second time, after 2017’s Valladolid premiere of The Bookshop, a film which went on to win the 2018 Goya awards for Best Film, Best Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay. Seminci has welcomed the filmmaker’s presence on other occasions, such as in 2005, when she made the promotional film that commemorated the Film Week’s 50th anniversary, or in 2015, when she delivered a masterclass and closed the 60th edition with her feature film Nobody Wants the Night, which she presented together with Juliette Binoche, who played the film’s lead role and collected the Valladolid Festival’s Honorary Spike that year.
Distinguished with Spain’s National Film Award on September 4 this year, Isabel Coixet (Sant Adrià del Besós, Barcelona, 1960) obtained her first nomination for the Goya Awards in 1988, with her debut film Too Old to Die Young. Her filmography includes such outstanding fiction films as Things That I Never Told You, Those Who Love, My Life Without Me (Goya for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2004), The Secret Life of Words (2006 Goya awards for Best Direction, Best Film, Best Original Screenplay and Best Production Manager; Ariel Award for Best Ibero-American film), Elegy, Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, Yesterday Never Ends, Another Me, Learning to Drive, Nobody Wants the Night (Goya Award for Best Original Score, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Costume Design and Best Production Supervision), The Bookshop or Elisa and Marcela.
Coixet’s prolific career also encompasses the documentary genre, with titles like Invisibles, dedicated to the work of Doctors Without Borders and Escuchando al juez Garzón, the respective winners of the Goya for Best Documentary Film in 2007 and 2011; or Spain in a Day, a project based on images recorded by anonymous Spaniards. In addition to participating in collective films like ¡Hay motivo! and Paris, je t’aime, she recently directed her first fiction series, Foodie Love.
