22/04/2024 - The Las Palmas-based industry gathering has rewarded directors Matías Ítalo Scarvaci and Daniela Muñoz Barroso, who received grants worth €9,000 and €6,000, respectively

The winners of MECAS 2024 (© MECAS)

It’s a wrap for the seventh edition of the Market Dedicated to Almost-Finished Films, best known as MECAS. The gathering, which ran from 19-21 April, unspooled during the days of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival (20-28 April). The awards ceremony took place yesterday.

A jury of experts made up of Jing Xu (Rediance), Nicola Marzano (Frames of Representation), Émilie Poirier (Festival du Nouveau Cinéma), Quentin Worthington (MPM Premium) and Lara González Lobo (International Film Festival Rotterdam) assessed the 18 projects selected for the two market strands – Almost-Finished Films and Films to Be Made. This year, both sections saw an increase in their top prizes by €1,000 each.

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The Almost-Finished Films Award (worth €9,000) was handed to Daughters by Matías Ítalo Scarvaci (Argentina). The jury praised the project “for the humanity and profound care adopted in order to reconcile the contradictions of tragic lives suspended between crime and love, and for the unprecedented access to the women of this film”.

Meanwhile, the Films to Be Made Award (worth €6,000) went to Silence Diaries by Daniela Muñoz Barroso (Cuba), billed by the jurors as “a film that investigates sound, sensorial dimensions and the language of cinema from both a very accomplished point of view and a moving personal trajectory”.

Next, Words that Burn by Alois Sandner Díaz (Spain/France) received the Isla MECAS Award, worth €1,000. The jury labelled his project “a provocative and clever attempt at investigating the contradictions of a dynamic that nowadays affects all of us: how virtual reality meets and disrupts real life”. Sandner Díaz’s film will also benefit from script consultancy with Anna Ciennik through the Very Good Script Award for a Films to Be Made project.

The Music Library &SFX Award for an Almost-Finished Films project (consisting of the assignment of production music from the firm’s catalogues and musical supervision) was bestowed upon Tiempo de morir by Ana García Blaya (Argentina). Furthermore, Submerged Island by Lucía Malandro and Daniel Saucedo (Cuba) received the Blackout Films Award for the creation of the DCP of their project (see the interview).

The Cinema Pendent de l'Alternativa PRO Award went to Guillermo Magariños’s Fiesta Negra (Spain). The jurors were impressed by how the project eliminates “boundaries between the real and the imagined; between the universal and the intimate; between the past, the present and the future; and between human relationships and the places they inhabit and that evolve, that are lost, that are recovered”.

Finally, Armand Rovira scooped the SEMILLERU Lab Award with his project Woman Bites Dog (Spain). The helmer will take part in the next edition of SEMILLERU in November, during the days of the Gijón International Film Festival. Rovira received the prize “for the originality, risk and freshness of his proposal, its almost Dadaist humorous perspective and its formal quality”.

MECAS is an industry initiative funded by the Ministry of Universities, Science, Innovation and Culture of the Government of the Canary Islands, with the support of the programme for the internationalisation of Spanish culture, PICE Visitors and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), with sponsorship from the Gran Canaria Film Commission and Music Library &SFX, and with the collaboration of Proexca, Blackout Films, Very Good Script, the SEMILLERU Lab of the Gijón International Film Festival, and Cinema Pendent of L'Alternativa PRO.

Here is the full list of this year’s award winners:

Almost-Finished Films Award
Daughters - Matías Ítalo Scarvaci (Argentina)

Films to Be Made Award
Silence Diaries - Daniela Muñoz Barroso (Cuba)

Isla MECAS Award
Words that Burn - Alois Sandner Díaz (Spain/France)

Very Good Script Award
Words that Burn - Alois Sandner Díaz

Music Library &SFX Award for an Almost-Finished Films Project
Tiempo de morir - Ana García Blaya (Argentina)

Blackout Films Award
Submerged Island - Lucía Malandro, Daniel Saucedo (Cuba)

Cinema Pendent de l’Alternativa PRO Award
Fiesta Negra - Guillermo Magariños (Spain)

SEMILLERU Lab Award
Woman Bites Dog - Armand Rovira (Spain)