She joins actors Juanjo Artero and Ana Turpin, who will receive awards in recognition of their careers in historical audiovisual media at the festival’s opening ceremony.
Nastassja Kinski, a German actress based in the United States who has worked in Hollywood and brought characters to life in more than 60 films, will be honored at the fifth edition of Saraqusta Film Festival with the Saraqusta Award, in recognition of her film career and her outstanding contribution to the historical genre. Kinski will be in Zaragoza from May 1 to 3 and will collect her award at the festival’s closing gala on Friday afternoon, May 2, at the Fundación Ibercaja Patio de la Infanta, where the awards for the films participating in this edition will also be presented.
Nastassja Kinski’s big break in the industry came from Roman Polański in ‘Tess’, a film set in late 19th-century England, in which Kinski plays a young woman from a humble family who discovers that she is actually descended from an illustrious clan. Her performance won her the Golden Globe for Best New Actress and a César Award nomination for Best Actress from the French Film Academy.
Kinski has worked with renowned producers such as Francis Ford Coppola and in films that are cinema classics such as Paris, Texas (Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival). In terms of historical audiovisual works, her roles in Spring Symphony, a biographical drama about 19th-century composer Robert Schumann and his wife, pianist Clara Wieck, and Revolution, about the colonists’ rebellion against England that sparked the War of Independence, in which the actress shared the cast with Al Pacino.
Also noteworthy is her participation in films such as The Claim, about the California Gold Rush in 1867, and An American Rhapsody, a film based on real events that tells the story of a Hungarian couple who escape from their country’s oppressive communist regime to the United States in 1950. In it, Kinski shared the screen with actors such as Scarlett Johansson and Tony Goldwyn.
Nastassja Kinski is the first foreign woman to receive the Saraqusta Award. To date, the figures from outside our borders who have been recognized with this award have been actors Joaquim de Almeida and Fabio Testi. “One of our goals as a festival is to award an international professional each year. Two years ago, we did so with Joaquim de Almeida from Portugal; last year, we turned to another country, Italy, with Fabio Testi; and this year, we are going to Germany and the United States, which are the countries linked to Kinski. We are thrilled to have a Hollywood figure at Saraqusta. As an international festival, we are committed to bringing film professionals from other corners of the globe to Zaragoza,” explains José Ángel Delgado, director of the festival.
SARAQUSTA AWARDS FOR THE 5TH EDITION
Kinski joins Juanjo Artero and Ana Turpin, the three actors who will be honored at this 5th edition of the festival with the Saraqusta Award in recognition of their professional careers linked to historical audiovisual works. The German actress will receive her award at the closing ceremony, and Artero and Turpin will receive theirs at the opening gala, which will take place on Friday, April 25, at the Fundación Ibercaja Patio de la Infanta.
Artero has brought characters to life in films such as ‘El río que nos lleva’ (The River That Carries Us), directed by Antonio del Real, which tells the story of the last shipment of logs down the Tajo River; and in José María Carreño’s ‘Ovejas negras’ (Black Sheep), which offers a critique of Catholic education in Franco’s Spain in the form of black comedy. He has also appeared in series such as ‘Amar es para siempre’ (Love is Forever), whose plot reflects the social, economic, and political changes in Spain from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Turpin, for his part, has been part of the cast of films such as El florido pensil (The Flowering Schoolyard) by Juan José Porto, based on the book of the same name by Andrés Sopeña. The film portrays education during the Spanish postwar period, specifically in the 1940s, through the eyes of a group of schoolchildren. In addition, like Artero, he has participated in historical fiction such as Amar en tiempos revueltos, set during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of Franco’s dictatorship, and the miniseries Hotel Almirante, which tells a story of love and mystery from the 1920s to the postwar period.