The Padilla case nominated for Best Documentary Film in Spain

The Padilla case, from CubanPavel Giroud, has been nominated in the category ofBest Documentary Feature Film for the Spanish Film Writers' Circle Awards.

The news was announced by the Cuban director himself on his social networks, where dozens of followers congratulated the creator for the new achievement for a documentary production that has already received other awards and recognitions.

The documentary work - which delves into one of the darkest episodes of the Cuban regime in the early 1970s - shows fragments of the original filming of the famous self-incrimination of the poet Heberto Padilla (1932-2000), which occurred on the night of December 27. April 1971 and which remained hidden in Cuba for more than 50 years.

The audiovisual, which does not exceed 80 minutes in length, is presented as a fascinating archival documentary that also offers a necessary contextualization of Cuba from 1959 to the beginning of the 70s.

At the beginning of this monthThe Padilla Case It has already been shortlisted for the Oscars. in the category of best documentary feature film.

The work appears on the list of 167 documentaries that academics will submit to analysis with a view to choosing 15 semi-finalists, from which the five nominees will then emerge.

In April,The Padilla case has already won the 2023 Platinum Ibero-American Film Award in the Best Documentary Film category.

"It is the story of a poet who was taken to prison in 1971 because of his rebellious work and then was forced to publicly recant," said Giroud on that occasion when collecting the award at the IFEMA Municipal Palace in Madrid. .

"The worst thing about that is that more than half a century later the same thing continues to happen in my country", added the director.

"That's why I, and everyone who voted for our film, want to thank you on behalf of all Cubans who are tired of our country being a theme park of an ideology or a utopia and that the pain of Cubans is not have the same pain as other nations that have suffered," he concluded.

The Padilla Case is the fifth feature film - fourth solo - by the Cuban filmmaker based in Spain.

The proposal shows notable differences in relation to his previous works: the fiction feature filmsThe age of the peseta (2006) and The companion (2015); as well as with the musical documentaryBetancort Playing Lecuona(2015), which he co-directed with Juan Manuel Villar.