Isabel Coixet will receive the Retrospective Award- MALAGA HOY in the 18th edition of Malaga Film Festival
The 18h edition of Malaga Festival which will take place from 17 to 26 April will grant the Retrospective Award, given in collaboration with the Málaga Hoy newspaper , to director Isabel Coixet
On the occasion of this tribute , the Festival de Málaga and Miss Wasabi Films (Isabel Coixet's production company) co-produce a documentary about Isabel Coixet, which will be screened in homage to the Catalan director. The documentary “ Palabras, mapas, secretos y otras cosas” ( words , maps , secrets and other things) , 60 minutes long, is a portrait of the filmmaker's private world and her acclaimed author sensitivity. It has been directed by Elena Trapé, a Barcelona young film director known for her first feature, Blog.
The purpose of this piece is to explore Coixet's own universe, career and life interviewing both work colleagues and friends, journalists and critics specialized. One of the most important parts of the doc is showing Isabel's early internationalization and success worldwide, when it was not common at all in Spain.
She made her first English language film in 1996, “Things I Never Told You”. This emotional drama, with a cast of American actors starring Lili Taylor and Andrew McCarthy, earned Coixet her first participation in Berlinale and a Goya nomination. Coixet is then associated with a French production company and in 1988 returned back to write in Spanish for the historical adventure “A los que aman” (to those who love)
Isabel Coixet ( Sant Adria de Besos, Barcelona, 1960 ) began making films when she was given an 8mm camera for her first communion. After graduating in History from the XVIIIth and XIX th centuries at the University of Barcelona, she was devoted to advertising. She won many awards for her spots and eventually founded her own production company in 2000, Miss Wasabi Films. In 1988 , Coixet made her debut as a screenwriter and director with “Too old to die young “, which earned her a nomination for the Goya Award for Best New Director
The international success arrived in 2003 with the intimate drama My Life Without Me a film based on a short story by Nancy Kincaid where Sarah Polley plays Ann, a young mother who decides to hide to her family that she has terminal cancer. This Spanish-Canadian production was highly praised at the Berlin International Film Festival. Coixet continued to work with Polley in a new film, The Secret Life of Words in 2005, also starring Tim Robbins and Javier Cámara. The film was awarded with four Goya Awards : Best Picture, Best Director, Best Production and Best Screenplay .
In 2011 she debuts in the Specials section of the Berlinale International Film Festival, with the documentary “Escuchando al Juez Garzón” (Listening to Judge Garzon) , which gives voice to the judge through an interview with Galician writer Manuel Rivas. The film won the Goya for best documentary .
During 2012 she directed a documentary about the 10 years of the Prestige black tide and the volunteers who participated in the recovery of the Galician coast entitled “Marea Blanca” (White Tide).
Late 2012 she starts to shoot “Another Me”, written and directed by her and shot in Wales and Barcelona. This thriller features Sophie Turner , Rhys Ipfans , Clare Forlani and Johnatan Rhys Meyers and Geraldine Chaplin among others.
During the summer of 2013 she shoots “Learning to Drive”, an American production made in New York and based on an article in the New York Times with Sir Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson as leading actors.
Her latest film , Nobody Wants the Night , filmed in Norway , Bulgaria and the Canary Islands and starring Juliette Binoche, Rinko Kikuchi and Gabriel Byrne, has been chosen as opening film of the 65th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival. Isabel Coixet is the first Spanish filmmaker who opens this important event.
FILMOGRAPHY
2015 Nobody Wants the Night
2014 Learning to Drive
2013 Another Me
2013 Ayer no termina nunca
2012 Marea blanca
2011 Escuchando al juez Garzón
2010 Aral. El mar perdido
2009 Map of the sounds of Tokio
2008 Elegy
2007 Invisibles: Cartas a Nora
2006 Paris je t'aime: Bastille
2005 The secret life of words (La vida secreta de las palabras)
2004 Hay motivo!: La insoportable levedad del carrito de la compra
2003 My life without me (Mi vida sin mí)
1998 A los que aman
1996 Things I never told you (Cosas que nunca te dije)
1989 Demasiado viejo para morir joven
1984 Mira y verás
