Catalan film 'Forastera' takes home FIPRESCI prize at Toronto International Film Festival
Critics lauded the director as a new voice of Spanish cinema
Catalan film 'Forastera' has won the international critics prize at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The awards were announced at the end of the annual festival, which takes place in early September and is one of the largest and most prestigious in the world. Nine other contemporary Catalan films were also presented at this year's festival.
Directed by Madrid-born, U.S.-based director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias and based on her 2020 short film of the same name, 'Forastera' centers on 16-year-old Cata (Zoe Stein). After her grandmother's death disrupts a family vacation in Mallorca, Cata begins to step into her grandmother's role in the family.
The film was produced in collaboration with Catalan streaming platform Filmin and public broadcasters 3Cat and IB3.
The FIPRESCI prize is awarded by the International Federation of Film Critics at major international film festivals. In their statement, the FIPRESCI jury praised Aleñar Iglesias' use of "restraint and precision" in her feature film debut and described 'Forastera' as "a ghost story about how the past lingers in the present."
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