Oliver Laxe

-Cidade de Ourense Award 21OUFF-

Oliver Laxe (Paris, 1982). Son of Galician emigrants, when he was 6 he returned with his family to Galicia, settling in A Coruña. After studying Filmmaking at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and living some time in London, he made the short films E as chemineas decidiron escapar in collaboration with Enrique Aguilar, Soa unha trompeta, agora vexo outra cara, and Paris #1. The pieces were screened and occasionally also awarded at festivals such as Gijón, BAFICI, Indielisboa, Las Palmas, Granada, Filminho and Play-Doc .

After a stay in Tangier, teaching Filmmaking at a foster care association, he created You All Are Captains, his first feature film. The film premiered internationally at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes 2010, where it won the FIPRESCI Award; thus he became the third Spanish director to get it after Iciar Bollain (with Flowers From Another World in 1999) and Antonio Méndez Esparza (with Here and There in 2012).

With his next film, Mimosas (2016), he achieved another important recognition: the Grand Prize of the Critics’ Week at Cannes. Mimosas chronicles the journey undertaken by three characters who want to bury the body of a religious teacher. According to Laxe, the film is “a geographical journey that goes in parallel with an inner epic”.

At present, the filmmaker is working on his next film, Aquilo que arde, a project with a philosophy that could approach to what is known as a mockumentary, a work of fiction featuring both actors and real people.

With this Cidade de Ourense Award, the OUFF pays tribute to Oliver Laxe by recognizing his work on creating and spreading Galician cinema outside our borders.