The Goya awards ceremony was held this weekend in the Spanish city of Valencia. The awards, given away by the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, are the most relevant for the Spanish and Ibero-American cinema and reward technical and creative achievements.

The big winner of the night was the movie The Good Boss. The feature film directed by Fernando León de Arona won in six categories out of the total of 20 in which it was nominated: Best Film, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Original Music, and Best Leading Actor — given to Javier Bardem, who was also recently nominated for an Oscar for his starring role in Being the Ricardos. 

Following the film by Fernando León de Aranoa was Leyes de la Frontera, directed by Daniel Monzón. Considered the revelation of the night, the film won in five categories: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best New Actor, Best Costume Design, Best Artistic Direction, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

The big disappointment of the night was for Pedro Almodóvar's film Madres Paralelas, which failed to win in any of the eight categories where it was nominated. Before the ceremony, the Goya Award odds for the Best Leading Actress were in favor of Penélope Cruz winning, considering her latest Oscar nomination for the part in the same movie. But the award went to Blanca Portillo’s for her role in Maixabel. The production also won in the Best New Actress and Best Supporting Actor categories.

The Goya for the Best Ibero-American Film goes to… 

The nominations in the category were: Las Siamesas from Argentina; Song without name from Peru; Los Lobos from Mexico and The Cordillera of Dreams from Chile. The last film, directed by the acclaimed Chilean director Patricio Guzmán, beat out its competitors as it also did at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019. 

The 84-minute feature became the first documentary to ever win in this category at the Goyas. It is also the fifth Chilean production to win a statuette at the Spanish Awards. 

The Cordillera of Dreams establishes a relationship between the magnificence of the Andes Mountains and the social legacy of the recent political history of Chile, a country that experienced 17 years of dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. The movie is part of a trilogy produced by the same director, who also made Nostalgia for the light (2010) and The Pearl Button, awarded at Berlinale in 2015.

"I do not know any other director who has dedicated 50 years to talking about memory,” said Alexandra Gavis, one of the documentary's producers, when collecting the award on behalf of Guzman, who did not attend the ceremony. 

"A country without documentaries is like a family without photo albums,” Guzmán once said. He produced 16 documentaries throughout his cinematographic career and is now one of the most internationally recognized Chilean filmmakers. Forced to leave his country in 1973, Guzmán lived in Cuba, Spain and France, where he currently resides at the age of 80.