Gijón's 64th Film Festival Opens With James Gray's Paper Tiger
James Gray's Paper Tiger opened the 64th Gijón International Film Festival on 13 November, starting a run that lasts until 20 November in the northern Spanish city. Variety reported that the film screened in the festival's Albar section, the main competition.
The festival, known by its initials FICX, has a competition of 21 features, all in the running for the top prize. Several arrive with prizes from other major festivals. Clio Barnard's I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is a winner of the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, a parallel section that runs alongside the main Cannes competition. Grant Lee's Everybody Digs Bill Evans won the Silver Bear at the Berlin festival. Visar Morina's Shame and Money took the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury prize at Sundance, and Valeska Grisebach's The Dreamed Adventure won the Jury Prize at Cannes.
Gijón has a record of spotting films early. Grisebach's earlier film Longing won the festival's best feature prize in 2006. Hong Sang-soo has taken that prize three times. In 2023, Radu Jude won the Albar top prize with Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, a film that later went on to wide international attention.
The festival also has a link to San Sebastián, the Spanish coastal festival held a little under two months earlier. The two are connected through an initiative called Cross Roads, which brings their programmes together. Alejandro Díaz Castaño is the festival's director.
Gray's film has a history with the festival too. His previous feature, Armageddon Time, opened the 2022 Gijón festival. This year the festival chose another of his films as its opener.
The festival closes on 20 November with Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky, which the festival has listed as its closing title. Between the opening and closing nights, the programme runs across the city's cinemas, with the competition and special sections sharing screens.
