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The programme includes 16 European films representing their countries at the Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category
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The selection of these European candidates will compete for a new prize: the Puerta América Award
The jury responsible for selecting the winning films for this year's competitive Official Section of Seville European Film Festival includes many highly regarded European figures in areas such as production, direction, distribution, and acting.
The winners of this 21st edition to be held from 8 to 16 November will be decided by British producer David Puttnam, who will chair the jury, Oscar-winning British actor Jeremy Irons, Rome Film Fest artistic director Paola Malanga, French programmer Eva Rekettyei, and French-Algerian director Mounia Meddour.
Jeremy Irons won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in The Von Bülow Mystery (Barbet Schroeder, 1990). He has also won two Golden Globes, an Emmy, a Tony, a SAG Award and an Honorary César.
His most outstanding films are The French Lieutenant's Woman (Karel Reisz, 1981), Swann in Love (Volker Schlöndorff, 1983), The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986), Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988), Kafka (Steven Soderbergh, 1991), Damage (Louis Malle, 1992), M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg, 1993), The House of the Spirits (Bille August, 1993), The Man in the Iron Mask (Randall Wallace, 1998), Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005) and Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006). Irons is the unforgettable voice of Scar in The Lion King (Rob Minkoff, Roger Allers, 1994).
His more recent work includes the award-winning independent film Margin Call (J. C. Chandor, 2011); Ben Wheatley's adaptation of J. G. Ballard's High-Rise; Dawn of Justice: Batman v. Superman (Zack Snyder, 2016); Justice League (Zack Snyder, 2017), in which he reprised his role as Alfred Pennyworth; and Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence, 2018), in which he co-starred with Jennifer Lawrence.
Irons also starred in and was executive producer of Candida Bray's award-winning environmental documentary Trashed.
Lord David Puttnam is the chairman of Atticus Education, an online education company founded in 2012 that provides audio-visual seminars to students worldwide. A British producer, educator and environmentalist, he was a member of the House of Lords for 24 years until his retirement in October 2021.
He devoted 30 years to independent filmmaking. His award-winning films include Midnight Express (Alan Parker, 1978), Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981), The Killing Films (Roland Joffé, 1984) and The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986).
Collectively, his films have won 10 Oscars, 13 Golden Globes, nine Emmys, 31 BAFTAs and the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Lord Puttnam is President of the Film Distributors Association, Life President of the National Film and Television School, International Ambassador for the WWF and Ambassador for UNICEF.
Journalist and film critic, Paola Malanga is one of the founders of Duel magazine and one of the main contributors to Paolo Mereghetti's Dizionario dei Film. Author of notorious essays on some of the great authors of world cinema and deputy director of Rai Cine, Paola Malanga is the artistic director of Rome Film Festival in 2022-2024.
Eva Rekettyei studied at the Sorbonne-Paris IV. She has been based in Spain for decades, where she joined the programming department of Yelmo Cines in the mid-1990s and became its programming manager. For more than two decades, she has helped this film exhibition company to become a leader in the Spanish market.
In addition to her work in programming, she is vice-president of the Spanish Cinema Federation (FECE) and has participated in the International Union of Cinemas (UNIC) mentoring programme for female executives. In 2022, she received the CineEurope Gold Award, given to film professionals in recognition of their outstanding commitment and service to the industry.
After studying journalism at the Faculty of Algiers, Mounia Meddour obtained a master's degree in information and communication at Paris 8. In 2000, she trained in cinema at La Fémis. She has directed several documentaries. Her first feature film, Papicha, Dreams of Freedom (2019), was selected in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes Film Festival and represented Algeria at the Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category. The film won the César Award for Best First Feature Film and its lead actress, Lyna Khoudri, won the César Award for Best Female Newcomer.
In 2022, she directed her second feature film, Houria, which was presented in competition at the Rome Film Festival and won the Best European Film Award in Milan (ALF Premio Miglior film Europeo).
Meddour was a member of the French National Centre for Cinema and the Animated Image reading commission in 2020 and 2021 and the Advance Grant Commission in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, she was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal by the French Ministry of Culture.
Puerta América
The jury for this new award will include the Oscar-winning Austrian producer Josef Aicholzer, the writer Nico Casariego and the academic Pascale Dillemann.
Josef Aicholzer is an Austrian producer who won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film for The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2007). His company, Aichholzer Film, specialises in feature films and creative documentaries, as well as films and TV series.
Aicholzer has participated in numerous MEDIA cooperations such as the Pilot Project, Slate, Step by Step, Sources, Arista, Eave and ACE. He is a member of the Austrian, German and European Film Academies.
Nico Casariego is a versatile author who has written novels, short stories, journalistic chronicles, essays and children's stories, and has collaborated with the press, publishing articles and travelogues.
He was a finalist for the Nadal Prize with the science fiction novel Cazadores de luz (Destino, 2005), and as co-author of the screenplay for Society of the Snow (J.A. Bayona, 2023) he was nominated for the Goya Awards and the Alma Screenwriters Union Award, and won the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos Medal.
His books include Carahueca (2011), a psychological thriller about a fairy tale monster that becomes real, the result of the adaptation of the screenplay for the film Intruders (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2011), co-written with Jaime Marques.
Pascale Dillemann's passion for film was born as a child in her native France but her professional experience was forged in Spain. For 10 years, she participated in the launch of several media: Panorama and La Gaceta de los negocios, as head of the photography and graphics department, and Cinemanía, as coordinator of film shoots and premieres.
Since then, she has worked in various production companies (Star Line, Morena Films) and distribution companies (BMG Entertainment, Sherlock Films) as festival, communication and post-production manager, as well as in acquisitions and sales.
Dilleman has also been a member of the advisory committees for the distribution and festival promotion grants of the Spanish Institute for Cinematography and Visual Arts (ICAA). She is a member of the Spanish Film Academy.
Oscar pre-candidates
In total, SEFF will show 16 films competing for the Puerta América Award, distributed throughout the programme. Thus, the official section includes the candidates presented by Latvia, Denmark, Belgium, Georgia and the United Kingdom, which are respectively the animated film Flow by director Gints Zilbalodis, the historical drama based on real events The Girl With the Needle by Magnus von Horn, the debut feature by Leonardo Van Dijl, Julie Keeps Quiet, the drama about the deportation of Georgians to Russia by director Rusudan Glurjidze, The Antique, and Santosh the criminal drama in Hindi by director Sandhya Suri.
Julie Keeps Quiet
Most of these Oscar contenders will be screened in the EFA section, which brings together the films shortlisted for the European Film Awards. This section includes nine films, some of which also won awards at the last Cannes festival, such as Portugal’s Grand Tour, which won the Best Director Award for Miguel Gomes; Emilia Pérez, by Jacques Audiard (France), which won for its female talent; the German nominee, The Seed of the Sacred Fig Tree, by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, which won the Grand Jury Prize; and Three Kilometres to the End of the World, by Romanian director Emanuel Parvu, which won the Queer Palm.
Emilia Pérez
The Norwegian section also includes the Norwegian film Armand, by Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann's grandson, Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel; the historical thriller Waves, by Czech director Jiří Mádl; the Italian Vermiglio, which won its director, Maura Delpero, the Grand Jury Prize at the last Venice Film Festival; the Hungary’s Semmelweis, by Lajos Koltai, a biopic about the doctor who developed antiseptic procedures; and of course the film that will represent Spain at the 2025 Oscars, Segundo premio, by Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez.
Segundo premio
Finally, there is another new section called Rampa (ramp) for filmmakers at the beginning of their careers, for emerging talents whose first and second films will be screened at SEFF, such as Under the Volcano, by Damian Kocur (Poland) and Drowning Dry, by Laurynas Bareiša (Lithuania).
