Top Malaga Industry Awards Go to ‘Of Books and Women,’ ‘Nothing,’ ‘SICA’

variety.com:

Anna Marie de la Fuente The Málaga Festival Industry Zone (MAFIZ) wrapped Thursday, March 25 with a slew of awards parceled out to productions from across Spain and Latin America.

Several projects by women filmmakers dominated the event, which kicked off on March 21.Spanish documentarian Carla Subirana’s fiction feature debut, “Sica” made off with three private-sector plaudits, including the Aracne post-production cash prize of €20,000 ($22,000) as well as the REC and Abycine awards, comprising participation in their respective industry labs.Backed by Alba Sotorra’s Cinema Productions, Galician firm Miramira, Spanish pubcaster TVE and Catalonia’s TVC, the coming-of-age drama turns on 13-year-old Sica who waits by the Costa da Morte, a Galician fishing shoreline, for the sea to give up the body of her fisherman father who perished at sea.

Other Work in Progress (WIP) awards went to documentary “Of Books and Women,” by María Elorza of Spain and “Nothing” (a working title) by Brazil’s Adriana Guimaraes.“Of Books and Women” offers a glimpse of various women and their relationships to books, one keeps a Franciscan library in a junk room, the other nearly breaks her finger on her bookshop shelves. “Against fire, water, moths, dust, ignorance and fanaticism, an anonymous army of women take care of the books.

It is an intimate resistance, no epic events, no revolution, no weapons,” the synopsis runs.Brazilian feature film “Nothing” centers on artist, Ana, who is setting up an exhibition of her works when she is called back to the farm where she grew up.