The filmmaker will inaugurate the 14th edition on June 1 and will offer a talk along with an “author cycle,” in which three feature films of her choice will be screened that respond to the theme of Humans Fest this year: the gender perspective in Defense of human rights
The Valencia International Film and Human Rights Festival, Humans Fest, organized by Fundación por la Justicia, has announced its honorary award Peace and Justice of 2023, which this year is awarded to the director Isabel Coixet to recognize a trajectory marked by working with gender perspective, helping to deconstruct traditional female representation and masculinity in the audiovisual field.
Coixet will receive this award at the opening of Humans Fest, which will be held next June 1 in it La Beneficencia Cultural Center. Likewise, the filmmaker will star in a colloquium on June 2, when her “author cycle” in The Film Library of Valencia, where the film that changed his career will be shown, My life without me, regarding its 20th anniversary and its latest documentary, The yellow roof. In addition, other screenings of feature films chosen by herself will be held under the thematic axis of the festival in 2023. These are classic films that have inspired her gender perspective in cinema.
“In this country, audiovisual production continues to be a masculinized world, where only a third of professionals are women. But still, we have tremendous directors like Isabel Coixet, who has been breaking stereotypes in cinema for more than 30 years through female characters who fight for their freedom and autonomy. She is our most international director and she is also so thanks to her feminist perspective and his social commitment”says Majo Siscar, director of the festival.
In this sense, José María Tomás y Tío, president of Fundación por la Justicia, points out that “it is important to highlight figures like Isabel Coixet, who with her work contributes to the defense of human rights. This festival, one of the main activities that we promote at Fundación por la Justicia, was born almost 15 years ago to, among other objectives, promote culture, with the intention of reaching a wide audience and in particular the most vulnerable people with special attention to the gender perspective and the diversity of the authors. This year we are also committed to inclusion, in collaboration with the ONCE Foundation.”
What's more: Isabel Coixet supports the projects of new directors from her production company Miss Wasabi Films, favoring the viability and visibility of works directed by women in cinema. According to the latest CIMA report, corresponding to 2021, “women work with amounts that represent half the amounts that feature films that are directed by men work with” and, likewise, “the frequency of recognition of the work of directors and screenwriters at festivals is 38 out of every 100 compared to a proportion of 13 out of every 100 obtained by their similar professional colleagues.”
ISABEL COIXET, COMMITTED AND PROLIFIC
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. Since then, his filmography includes numerous fiction feature films that have earned him recognition and praise both in Spain and in other countries.
This is the case of Things I never told you, To those who love o My life without me (Goya for best adapted screenplay in 2004). Specific, Things I never told you It was his first film shot in English, for which he had a cast of American performers led by Lili Taylor and Andrew McCarthy.
For its part, in My life without me Canadian actress Sarah Polley plays a woman who discovers that she has terminal cancer and decides to make a list of things to do before she dies, preparing everything for when she is no longer there for her two daughters and her husband. This film, which this year celebrates the 20th anniversary of its release, represented its international leap.
To them are added The secret Life of the words (Goyas for best direction, film, original script and production direction in 2006 and Ariel 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 music, costumes, makeup and hair, and production direction), The bookstore, Elisa and Marcela, about the wedding of two women in 1901, which is recorded as the first homosexual marriage recorded in the world, or its last fiction premiere It snows in Benidorm, filmed in that Valencian city.
Likewise, Coixet has also worked in the documentary genre with titles such as invisible, dedicated to the work of Doctors Without Borders, Journey to the heart of torture, Listening to Judge Garzón o Spain in a Day, a project based on domestic images recorded by volunteers. At the end of 2014 he filmed the documentary in Chad Talking about Rose, prisoner of Hissène Habré about the torture experience of a group of victims in their fight to bring their country's former dictator to justice.
This year she has once again been nominated for the Goya for The yellow roof, a documentary that addresses the sexual abuse suffered by a group of women during their adolescence at a theater school. In addition, on Netflix you can see his first fiction series, Foodie Love. Regarding recognitions, it is worth noting that in 2009 he received the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts and in 2015, the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres Medal from the French Ministry of Culture.
HUMANS FEST, A FESTIVAL OF COMPLAINT AND REFLECTION
Humans Fest will celebrate its 14th edition from Thursday June 1 to Saturday June 10, ten days during which it will energize different spaces in the city with projections y colloquia that will focus on identifying and questioning discrimination, inequality and exclusion based on gender, as well as the actions that are undertaken anywhere in the world to change and advance the construction of equality. To this end, the festival will offer a selection of feature-length and short films, both fiction and documentaries.
Humans Fest is part of the international Human Rights Film Network. Its 14th edition is celebrated thanks to the collaboration of the Conselleria de Cooperació, Diputació de València, Ajuntament de València, Institut Valencià de Cultura, Caixa Popular and Teika.