Tag Archives: Bigas Luna

Javier Bardem to Receive Donostia Award at San Sebastian Film Festival

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Javier Bardem will be feted in Northern Spain…

The San Sebastian Film Festival will honor the 54-year-old Spanish Oscar-winning actor with its prestigious Donostia Award at its 71st edition, running September 22 — 30.

Javier BardemBardem will receive the career achievement prize on Friday, September 22 at the Kursaal Auditorium, 30 years after his first visit to the Festival for the competition screening of Bigas Luna’s film Golden Balls in 1993.

An image of Bardem will also serve as the official poster of this year’s festival.

Bardem is one of Spain’s most prominent cinematic names, with over 70 screen credits. He picked up an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for his turn in the Coen Brothers’ neo-western No Country for Old Men.

Bardem was last at San Sebastian in 2021 with the workplace comedy-drama The Good Boss from Fernando León de Aranoa. The film was Spain’s submission for the international Oscar race.

Later this year, Bardem returns for the second film in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune series, where he plays the character Stilgar alongside Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya.

Last year, the lifetime achievement award was handed to David Cronenberg and Juliette Binoche. Other previous filmmakers to have received the Donostia Award include Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Oliver Stone, Agnès Varda, Hirokazu Koreeda, and Costa-Gavras.

Colombian filmmaker Laura Mora clinched the Golden Shell in the main competition at last year’s San Sebastian Film Festival with her latest feature The Kings of the World (Los reyes del mundo).

Penelope Cruz Receives Donostia Award at San Sebastian Film Festival

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Penelope Cruzis being heralded in her home country…

The 45-year-old Oscar-winning Spanish actress has received San Sebastian Film Festival‘s biggest honor, the Donostia Award.

Penelope Cruz

Cruz was given the prize — which had been announced in May — over the weekend during a gala ceremony in a surprise presentation by her close friend, U2lead singerBono, who praised Cruz for her film roles and her off-screen concern for humanity.

“Penélope’s life on the screen fascinates me because it is a family drama,” he said. “Artists like us, like me, get lost in our own selves. Penelope gets lost in others. That’s why we get lost in her.” 

Upon accepting the award, Cruz spoke out against domestic violence against women in Spain and around the world.

“So far this year, 44 women have been murdered by gender-based violence in our country, and since 2003 more than a thousand. How many women are being murdered around the world?”, she asked. “I hope that when a woman finds the superhuman strength she needs to tell what she is going through in such a situation, she will be heard at first and not when it is too late.”

Cruz dedicated the award to her parents, her children and husband, fellow actor Javier Bardem, and three directors she has worked with: Pedro Almodóvar, Bigas Lunaand Fernando Trueba.

Cruz is the youngest actress to receive the Donostia prize, three of which are awarded each year.

Greek director Costa-Gavrasand Canadian actor Donald Sutherlandwere named winners of the honor earlier in the week at the festival in the northern Spanish seaside resort town. Cruz won the best actress Oscar in 2008 for her role in Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, becoming the first Spanish actress to win an Academy Award.

Cruz Gives Birth to Second Child with Javier Bardem

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Penélope Cruz and husband Javier Bardem will be pulling double duty from now on.

The 39-year-old Spanish actress and the 44-year-old Spanish actor welcomed their second child, a daughter, on Monday.

Penelope Cruz & Javier Bardem

Cruz gave birth at Madrid’s Ruber International hospital just to the north of the city, where Spain’s Crown Princess Letizia gave birth to her two daughters, a hospital source said.

“The couple checked in yesterday and she gave birth yesterday,” the source told AFP without specifying the gender of the baby.

Cruz gave birth to a girl “just a few hours” after Kate Middleton welcomed her little boy in St Mary’s Hospital in London on Monday, according to the online edition of Spanish celebrity magazine Hola!.

The new arrival is the couple’s second child. They are already parents to two-year-old son Leonardo, who was born at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles in 2011.

Cruz and Bardem met when they starred opposite each other in Bigas Luna‘s film Jamon, Jamon back in 1992.

In 2008, they were back together on the silver screen in Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, for which Cruz won an Academy Award as best supporting actress.

Bardem, nominated for an Oscar in Before Night Falls, won an Academy Award in 2007 for his role in No Country for Old Men.

The couple married in July 2010 at a ceremony in the Bahamas after keeping their romance quiet for years.

Both Bardem and Cruz star in Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor, a high-profile autumn release written by Scott and also featuring Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Michael Fassbender.