‘Obaba’ nominated as Spanish entry for Oscars

30 September 2005

MADRID — ‘Obaba’, a work by director Montxo Armendariz, will represent Spain in the competition for nominations for next year’s Oscars in the category of best foreign film.

The Academy of Spanish Cinema took two rounds of voting to select ‘Obaba’ over ‘Princesas’, by Fernando Leon de Aranoa, and Jose Luis Garci’s ‘Ninette’.

Armendariz’s 1997 ‘Secretos del Corazon'(Secrets of the Heart) was nominated for the best foreign film Oscar, but did not win the award.

‘Obaba’, which was the opening feature at the recent San Sebastian International Film Festival in northern Spain, is a free adaptation of Bernardo Atxaga’s novel ‘Obabakoak’ and features Pilar Lopez de Ayala, Mercedes Sampietro and Argentine Juan Diego Botto in the lead roles.

It tells the story of a character who tries to film the life of the people in a village called Obaba. But nothing is quite what it seems as the people are stuck in a past from which they neither want to or can escape.

Spain walked away with the honors for best foreign film at last year’s Oscars, when the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave the nod to Alejandro Amenabar’s ‘Mar adentro’ (The Sea Inside).

The Oscar nominations will be announced in January and the gala awards ceremony is in March.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news