Barcelona, 9 de February de 2023
The Brain Film Fest will premiere the latest films by Werner Herzog and Gerardo Herrero
The opening film will be Long Live My Happy Head, premiere in Spain.
One year, one night, by Isaki Lacuesta, will close the 6th edition of the festival.
The Brain Film Fest, an international film festival that this year will deal with art, creativity and the brain as central themes, advances part of the programming for its 6th edition, which will take place from March 15 to 19 at the CCCB (Barcelona). The festival is promoted by the Pasqual Maragall Foundation and co-organized with Minimal Films, with the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology – Ministry of Science and Innovation.
The contest will feature the Spanish premiere of Bajo terapia, by Gerardo Herrero, a comedy in which three couples will participate in a very particular group therapy session, starring well-known faces from Spanish cinema such as Malena Alterio, Alexandra Jiménez, Fele Martínez, Antonio Pagudo, Eva Ugarte and Juan Carlos Vellido. It will also be possible to see for the first time in Catalonia the latest proposal by Werner Herzog, Theater of Thought, a documentary on the human brain in which science, thought and poetry converge.
The opening film -Spanish premiere- will be the British documentary Long Live My Happy Head, directed by Will Hewitt and Austen McCowan, and starring a Scottish comic book artist who uses art to convey his experience with the brain tumor he suffers and face his mortality. Will Hewitt will be one of the guests at the Brain Film Fest, who will present the film to the festival audience.
Another of the titles present at the festival will be Petricor, directed by Victoria Morell, who will attend the Brain Film Fest to present this story about three women from different generations who live with an eating disorder. The director from Mallorca has obtained the CIMA award at the last Navarra International Film Festival for this film. Also with female protagonists, Las gentiles, by Santi Amodeo, can be seen at the festival. A story about adolescence and its contradictions, the influence of social networks or depression and the fantasy of leaving that world.
Two of the most celebrated titles over the past year will also be on the Brain Film Fest 2023 programme. On the one hand, One Year, One Night, by Isaki Lacuesta -winner of five Gaudí Awards- portrays the post-trauma of a surviving couple of the Bataclan attack (Paris) and will be in charge of closing this year’s festival. On the other hand, The Rite of Spring, by Fernando Franco, which deals with the experience of intimate relationships of people with cerebral palsy.
Program preview of Brain Film Fest 2023
- Bajo terapia (Gerardo Herrero)
- Long Live My Happy Head (Will Hewitt, Austen McCowan)
- Into Dad’s Woods (Vero Cratzborn)
- Bigger than Trauma (Vedrana Pribacic)
- Theatre of Thought (Werner Herzog)
- Loca por la vida (Ann Sirot, Raphaël Balboni)
- Petricor (Victòria Morell)
- Las gentiles (Santi Amodeo)
- La consagración de la primavera (Fernando Franco)
- Un año, una noche (Isaki Lacuesta)
CITY AND SCIENCE BIENNIAL
The third edition of the City and Science Biennial will take place from February 21 in Barcelona and simultaneously in Madrid. This year’s edition will invite us to reflect on the fact of living in a time full of challenges of all kinds and on all scales, and on how to approach, from science, the crises to which we are exposed today.
The Brain Film Fest 2023 will be present on Wednesday, March 1, at Cinemes Girona with the screening of the documentary Imad’s Childhood, directed by Zahavi Sanjavi, which explores the consequences of captivity at the hands of the Islamic state of a Yazidi boy and his family. The screening will be accompanied by a discussion with Álvaro Vicente, a researcher on violent radicalization at the Elcano Royal Institute and the Rey Juan Carlos University, Alba Sotorra, director of El retorno: La vida después del ISIS, and Albert Solé, artistic director of the Brain Film Fest and the recent documentary Return to Raqqa.
BRAIN FILM FEST 2023 JURY
The festival will have a jury made up of four film, science and civil society professionals who will decide the winners of the XIII Solé Tura Award, which recognizes short films that revolve around themes involving the brain.
The director, screenwriter and current president of the Catalan Film Academy, Judith Colell, will be part of this year’s jury. The actor Brays Efe, known for his role in Paquita Salas, will also contribute his vision in the cinematographic field in the deliberation of the awards.
With regard to the scientific field, the festival will feature José Luis Trejo, who heads the Adult Individual Neurogenesis Group at the Cajal Institute in Madrid, of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). And finally, the journalist Elianne Ros, director of the Media Relations Area of the La Caixa Foundation, will also be a member of the Brain Film Fest 2023 jury.