The actress Penélope Cruz received this Saturday the National Cinematography Award from the Spanish Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta. She was very moved, she dedicated the award to her family and announced that she will allocate the award for social purposes.
“The adventure of this long journey to Ithaca is proving to be much more exciting than I ever could have dreamed of from the living room of my parents’ house,” she said.
The jury of the prize, endowed with 30,000 euros, unanimously awarded the award to the actress, born in Alcobendas (Madrid), “for the successes achieved in 2021, which join all those collected in an exceptional career”.
According to Cruz, the amount of the prize will be allocated, divided into three parts, to the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, to the Cris unit against cancer of advanced therapies of the Hospital la Paz in Madrid, and to the assistance fund created by Pilar Bardem in Aisge to give shelter to film professionals who “are having difficulties.”
The event, held in Tabakalera within the framework of the 70th San Sebastian Film Festival, was attended by institutional representatives such as the Vice President of the Government, Nadia Calviño, the Government delegate in the Basque Country, Denis Itxaso, as well as municipal representatives, among others, and the world of cinema. Her sister, Mónica Cruz, and the mother of the Madrid interpreter have also accompanied her at the ceremony.
The actress Goya Toledo and the actor Luis Tosar, friends of Penélope Cruz, were in charge of introducing the Award with speeches in which they praised the “human category” of the actress.
For his part, Miquel Iceta addressed words of congratulations to the award-winning artist, stating that “giving her this award in San Sebastian, in the largest of Spanish festivals, is also a recognition of her international projection, her role as ambassador, a thank you to the way in which Spanish culture travels with it, with its richness and diversity, its professionals and creatives”.
Penélope Cruz expressed that it is “an honor to receive the National Film Award because cinema “has been and is my passion since I was a child” when “I dreamed from my parents’ living room of worlds to explore beyond my neighborhood.”
In this way, he thanked his parents for having the “immense generosity of supporting me on a path that a priori was so alien to them”, and his “teachers” in interpretation Cristina Rota and Juan Carlos Coraza, who put him “on the path of the constant search for truth and authenticity at work”. “Although it is not always achieved, the most important thing for me as an actress is to continue searching for that truth from curiosity and from humility,” she assured.
In his cinematographic career, he wanted to make special mentions of Bigas Luna and Fernando Trueba who “opened the doors of a world for me that thanks to them I continue to travel today” and Pedro Almodóvar, “the director with whom I have worked the most times, I hope that many more and one of the people who has best narrated our country, an essential figure to understand cinema in general”.
“I owe Pedro a lot not only for the work we have done together, but also because he takes you to such a demanding level that in that search I have always ended up discovering something new about myself,” she asserted.
Finally, she dedicated the award to her husband Javier Bardem and her family, and especially to her son and her daughter, who “are the most wonderful thing in this world.”
(With information from Europe Press)