Spain's 2014 Goya Awards

Spanish Movies' Awards

The Goya Awards are Spain’s most prestigious and well known cinematic accolades. They are considered to be the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards. The first ever award ceremony took place on March 16th, 1987 at the Teatro Lope de Vega in Madrid; this was a year after the founding of the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España (Spanish Academy of Cinematic Art and Science) The event has taken place every year since this date, with the ceremony falling at the end of January or in early February. Prizes are awarded to films that have been produced in the previous year and currently honor 28 different categories.

So, on February 9th 2014, the most influential individuals in the Spanish film industry gathered at the Centro de Convenciones y Congresos Príncipe Felipe to celebrate another successful year in Spanish cinema. The nominees for the 28th Goya Awards were announced approximately a month before the ceremony that was presented by Manuel Fuentes. Two films were particularly successful with Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed winning six awards, and “Witching and Bitching”, a horror-comedy film co-written and directed by Álex de la Iglesia eclipsing this with eight.

Despite the aforementioned Living is Easy with Eyes Closed winning two less Goyas, David Trueba´s work, based on the true story of an English teacher who used Beatle’s songs to inspire and educate his students, did win what are generally considered to be the most important awards on the evening; namely Best Film, Best

Director and Best Original Screenplay. Fernando Franco Garcia won the award for the Best New Director for his film Wounded and the best European film was Amour, a French-language drama that was written and directed by Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke, that is particularly famous for winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th Academy Awards.

The Goya Award

The Goya award was named after the internationally-recognized Spanish painter Francisco Goya who was such an important representative of Spanish culture. It was also felt that his short surname would make the award appear similar to the Oscar of America. The prize itself is a bronze bust of the great artist designed by the sculptor José Luis Fernández. In the 28 year history of the ceremony, there are three films that have managed to win “The Big Five”, this epithet refers to the extraordinary achievement of a single film winning the awards for Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress and Writing. These three overwhelmingly successful films are ¡Ay, Carmela! (1990) Take My Eyes (2003) and The Sea Inside (2004).