Seville Film Festival Opens With Honors for Holland, Frémaux and Cartoon Saloon

The Seville European Film Festival opens Friday, honoring Agnieszka Holland, Thierry Frémaux and Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon with its Golden Giraldillo awards. It's the first time the festival gives a Giraldillo to a company rather than a person.

Holland went first among the three 2026 honorees. A towering presence in Polish cinema, the director of "Angry Harvest" and "Europa Europa" received her Giraldillo and spoke at a Friday press conference, interviewed by festival director Manuel Cristóbal, about the state of European cinema. "I think that we should take more risks. We need courage and freedom to listen to people's realities, and open up a little more. It's difficult because the world has changed a lot in the last 10 years with social media, big data and AI. Hard truth has lost its attraction. I'm not very optimistic but we must attempt it."

Frémaux, who has kept Cannes the most important festival in the world — no mean achievement — picks up a Giraldillo de Honor not only for that but for his work at Lyon's Lumière Film Festival (a heritage-cinema event) and his documentaries on the Lumière brothers. Cartoon Saloon, the pioneer of exquisite 2D Irish animation behind 2007's "The Secret of Kells," receives the third award, timed to its 25th anniversary.

"One of the wonderful things that festivals can do is pay respect to people that have open roads for European cinema and world cinema," Cristóbal said.

Who competes for the Golden Giraldillo?

The main competition spans 15 titles. Two of the most awaited are Dani de la Orden's "The Director" and Andrew Haigh's "A Long Winter." "The Director," a world premiere backed by Beta Fiction Spain and De la Orden's follow-up to breakout "A House on Fire," adapts David Jiménez's autobiographical non-fiction book about leading the digital transformation of newspaper El Mundo — effectively a record of journalism under pressure from political and economic interests.

"A Long Winter," Haigh's first film since "All of Us Strangers," is set on a farm in the Rockies in the early 1950s. Variety hailed it as "a sweeping act of cinematic storytelling."

What about the new talent?

Debuts spangle the lineup. Rampa, a whole section, is devoted to first and second European features. Highlights include:

• "Adult Supervision," the first feature of Swedish author and podcast host Alex Schulman, starring "Vikings'" Gustaf Skarsgård. Heretic has sold it widely, including to WBD, Place and Vertigo.
• Miroslav Terzić's "3 Weeks After," an unflinching portrait of high-school bullying.
• Abinash Bikram Shah's "Elephants in the Fog," a thriller set in a Nepalese transgender community and winner of a Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize.
• Eivind Landsvik's "Low Expectations," driven by singer-songwriter Marie Ulven, known as Girl in Red — "a slow, quiet and life-affirming late coming-of-age tale you don't want to look away from."
• Rudi Rosenberg's "Words of Love," described by Variety as a film that sensitively captures the chaos and compassion of family.

Established names balance the newcomers. "Black Money for White Nights," a probing take on pro-Russia nostalgia, comes from Bulgaria's Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe winners with "The Father." "The Idiot(s)," starring Johnny Flynn and Aimee Lou Wood, is an "unexpectedly romantic portrait" of Dostoevsky and his wife from Małgorzata Szumowska — a three-time Berlin winner — and cinematographer Michał Englert.

Why a screenplay market?

The festival's biggest industry push happens at Frame, its industry umbrella, in partnership with Spain's ICAA film agency. Seville launches Insula, a screenplay market featuring 58 titles. The festival unveiled its competition lineup with screenwriters credited alongside directors; their role in the collective art of cinema is not appreciated enough, Cristóbal has argued.

The jury president fits the theme: AMPAS VP Howard A. Rodman, screenwriter of "Savage Grace" and "August." Opening the festival is Sébastien Laudenbach's Cannes animation hit "Viva Carmen!," with Laudenbach and voice actress Camélia Jordana attending. Oscar winner Fernando Trueba presents doc feature "Bajañi," following flamenco guitarist Niño Josele as he plays with Caetano Veloso, Ron Carter and Rubén Blades.

Seville also programs crossover titles. After "The Chosen" Season 6 sold out in minutes in 2025, this year one title turns on Seville soccer club. "We want to program different films attending the different audiences in Europe. Seville is also the fourth biggest city in Spain, so we need to expand the scope of the Festival," Cristóbal said.

The Andalusian Panorama runs to 16 titles. Among them is the buzzy competition debut "Taranta," Samuel Nacar's documentary produced by Sarao Films and set in Linares, a former boom town with one of Europe's highest unemployment rates. "The principal idea is to ask what it's like to grow up in a town which you think has no future," Nacar said. Even when a Chinese company reopens the local car plant, the film's two young protagonists hesitate between staying or leaving. With Insula and a company Giraldillo both debuting, Seville is quietly rewriting what a mid-sized festival can honor — and how.