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The jury, headed by U.S. filmmaker Ira Sachs, was so enamored of the intimate character drama about social and familial care that they handed Leigh a second win for Best Screenplay, while ensemble standout Kate O’Flynn — fresh from her Emmy victory for “Widow’s Bay” — was one of two women awarded the non-gendered Best Lead Performance prize, for her funny, gradually heartbreaking performance as a put-upon London social worker facing up to the ailing health of her own parents.

Neither Leigh nor O’Flynn was present at the ceremony, though both sent video acceptance speeches: Leigh, keeping it brief, concluded his acceptance with a simple “thank you, thank you and love to everybody,” while O’Flynn celebrated “Tender Loving Care” as “[a] film that sees empathy as a strength and the attempt to care important.” She further dedicated her award to Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson and Alice Bailey Johnson, her three co-stars in an equally weighted quartet. Jesson and Bailey Johnson, meanwhile, were on hand to accept Leigh’s screenplay award on his behalf, with Jesson addressing the “misunderstanding” that the director’s films are improvised, praising the “precision, rigor and purpose” of Leigh’s shooting process.

Another multiple prizewinner was Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s handsome rural epic “Growth of the Soil,” which was recently selected as Norway’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. Its star Asta Kamma August, daughter of the filmmaker Bille August, shared the Best Lead Performance award with O’Flynn for her affecting turn as one half of a young couple building a farmstead from scratch in the early 20th century. Oskar Dahlsbakken won Best Cinematography for his sturdy lensing of the film’s craggily spectacular Nordic mountainscapes.

Also awarded by the jury — which in addition to Sachs, included actors Bill Skarsgård, Alice Braga and Patricia López Arnaiz, producer Mike Goodridge, filmmaker Genki Kawamura and screenwriter Catherine Paillé — was “Border,” a short, striking and sexually explicit debut feature by Hong Kong filmmaker Ah Biao, which won the Special Jury Prize for its originality and daring. Swedish Sámi filmmaker Amanda Kernell won Best Director for “Brace Your Heart,” a portrait of a young female reindeer herder in the indigenous Sámi community, which also picked up a special mention in Toronto’s Platform competition last week. In an impassioned speech, Kernell explained her deeply personal motivation for making the film, which she said she hoped would “heal old wounds, especially in my family.”

With only five of the 17 films in competition taking prizes, high-profile titles going home empty-handed included Fatih Akin’s festival opener “Ghost Song,” Pablo Larraín’s “My Sad Dead,” Fred Cavayé’s all-star “Les Miserables” adaptation and Jesse Eisenberg’s fall festival favorite “The Debut.” The only Spanish winner in competition, meanwhile, was veteran character actor Javier Cámara, a popular Best Supporting Performance pick for his turn in the comic fantasy “5 More Minutes.” After three consecutive years of Spanish films taking the Golden Shell, this year marks a slightly disappointing turnout for the home team.

But national pride was bolstered by the Audience Award for Best Film — which went, to absolutely no one’s surprise, to local favorites Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for their queer epic “La Bola Negra,” one week after the international festival sensation took the People’s Choice Award at Toronto. A second Audience Award for Best European Film — which presumably discounts the main award winner — went to docmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor for “NAZA,” their searing exposé of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, which won the Jury Prize at Venice earlier this month. It’s the second year in a row that San Sebastián audiences have shown their solidarity with the pro-Palestinian movement: Last year’s Audience Award went to Kaouther Ben Hania’s eventually Oscar-nominated “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”

Several of the night’s winners, moreover, expressed their support for the people of Palestine on stage. August, pointing to the pro-Palestine pin on her dress, concluded her speech by saying, “No one is free until everyone is free — free Palestine.” Meanwhile, German filmmaker Naëmi Ada offered a similarly worded sentiment with a more pointed kicker in her acceptance of the New Directors award: “There is no individual liberation without collective liberation,” she said, adding, “I condemn the complicity of the German state in the genocide.”

Ada’s debut feature “Body of Glass” — a dark psychological drama about a young dancer who immerses herself in a stranger’s grieving circle — was the top prizewinner in New Directors, the festival’s separate competition for first-time filmmakers; a special mention went to “The World Before,” a coming-of-age romance by South Korean director Yoon Dan-bi.

Top prizes in the festival’s two other competitive sections went to titles that have already gathered significant acclaim on the festival circuit. Argentine-American photographer-turned-filmmaker Alessandra Sanguinetti won the top prize in the Latin Horizons strand for her feature documentary “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer,” shot over the course of more than 20 years in rural Argentina, which won multiple awards, including Best First Film, at Locarno in August.

In the more experimentally-oriented Zabaltegi-Tabakalera competition, Jane Schoenbrun emerged victorious for her delicious summer cult item “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” — a film she described, in her video acceptance speech, as “a celebration of being a little freak, and also a celebration of cinema.” The first statement is a far cry from anything one can imagine Mike Leigh saying; the second, at San Sebastián, felt a more universal ideal.

Full list of award winners:

OFFICIAL SELECTION AWARDS

Golden Shell for Best Film: “Tender Loving Care,” Mike Leigh

Special Jury Prize: “Border,” Ah Biao

Silver Shell for Best Director: “Brace Your Heart,” Amanda Kernell

Silver Shell for Best Leading Performance: “Tender Loving Care,” Kate O’Flynn; “Growth of the Soil,” Asta Kamma August

Silver Shell for Best Supporting Performance: “5 More Minutes,” Javier Cámara

Jury Prize for Best Cinematography: “Growth of the Soil,” Oskar Dahlsbakken

Jury Prize for Best Screenplay: “Tender Loving Care,” Mike Leigh

OTHER OFFICIAL AWARDS

New Directors Award: “Body of Glass,” Naëmi Ada
Special Mention: “The World Before,” Yoon Dan-bi

Latin Horizons Award: “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer,” Alessandra Sanguinetti
Special Mention: “Flies,” Fernando Eimbcke

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award: “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Jane Schoenbrun
Special Mention: “Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion,” María Aparicio

Best Original Music Award: “Milo,” Amine Bouhafa

Audience Award for Best Film: “La Bola Negra,” Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi

Audience Award for Best European Film: “NAZA,” Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

Irizar Basque Film Award: “Txakun txakür,” Elsa Oliarj-Inès

Culinary Zinema Award: “Burgundy,” Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw

RTVE Another Look Award: “All of a Sudden,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Spanish Cooperation Award: “Five Years, Four Months,” Juan Miguel Gelacio and Esteban Hoyos García

Transforma Award: “Tender Loving Care,” Mike Leigh

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED AWARDS

Nest Award: “Erased From the Map,” Maarij Reka
Special Mention: “Nobody Barks,” Julia Coldwell Serra

Euskadi Basque Country 2030 Agenda Award: “Ashes,” Diego Luna

Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Best Spanish Project: Pixentinel, Luis Zabala

Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Best European Project: Virtual Location Scouting, Antti Ahokoivu

Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Special Mention for Entrepreneurship: Virtual Location Scouting, Antti Ahokoivu

WIP Latam Industry Award: “Lovers Go Home!,” Juan Sebastián Mesa

Egeda Platino Industria Award For The Best WIP Latam: “Galerna,” Tatiana Huezo

WIP Europa Industry Award: “In a Manner of Speaking,” Val Jashari

WIP Europa Award: “In a Manner of Speaking,” Val Jashari

XIII Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum Best Project Award: “The Amateurs,” Felipe Solari Yrigoyen

DALE! Award: “The Illusions,” Ingrid Pokropek

Artekino International Award: “Mourning Sound,” Selma Cervantes

Casa Wabi-ESCINE Award: “The Spirit Healer Is Away for the Weekend,” Inês Nunes

Tanta Award: “Akira,” Ekain Albite

Sideral Award: “Akira,” Ekain Albite

Music Library & SFX Award: “Shady Birds,” Zaira Zanguitu

Dogwoof Award: “Different Colors of Sabir,” Safaa Khatib

Epe-Ibaia-Elkargi Award: “The Hammock,” Alfonso García

Eusko Label Micro Short Film Award: “Esperantza,” Josu Ozaita
Runner-up: “Hands,” Mikel Urretabizkaia

Loterias Award: “Prejuicios,” Javi Prada
Runner-up: “Headscarf,” Lucía Saavedra %!s()

I lived inside that fear, not of a school test, but of speaking in class and having the wrong language come out, or the right one come out wrong.

I was born in the Dominican Republic. My parents divorced when I was 1, and left for the US, independent of each other, while I stayed behind in my maternal grandparents' care. At 6, my mother came back for me, remarried, with a new baby, and my legal documents. She'd divorce again, and with her third husband, she started a clothing manufacturing business that brought us back to the Dominican Republic, where I lived from 11 to 16.

Two high schools in Spanish in the Dominican Republic, for the freshman and sophomore years. Then two in English, junior and senior year, first in New Jersey, then in New York City.

I grew up learning how to switch between Spanish and English, and having to prove myself in both languages.

I was put in ESL classes

When I moved to the US, I was placed straight into an ESL class. Nobody tested me or heard me speak; they just saw a Spanish-speaking country on a piece of paper and decided who I was.

I hated that I had to prove myself every time I went to a new school. I had to perform on command for someone to believe that I could speak the language. I raised my hand when I didn't have to. I corrected a teacher's grammar once, in front of the class, just to watch her catch herself. I answered faster and sharper than I needed to.

Once, I wrote an essay on the Civil War and got called into the principal's office like I'd done something wrong. They said it was informative, precise, well written, remarkably so, for an immigrant. They accused me of plagiarism. My mother was called in. She didn't flinch. She'd watched me write it at our kitchen table and said so, plainly. The principal sat me alone with a blank page and a new topic: what the American flag stood for. I wasn't going to let him win this one either. I wrote about Betsy Ross bent over a needle and thread, stitching a symbol together before anyone knew what it would represent, and about pledging allegiance to that flag in a tongue I hadn't been born speaking. There was nothing left to accuse me of. I passed, and I made sure he knew he'd been wrong.

I wanted to get better

At my new school in New York, I asked a teacher how to get better. She said, "Read all the newspapers." So I did, every day, without missing one. That daily habit is the actual reason I can write at all. Nobody handed me that ability. A teacher trusted me with one honest sentence, and I built the rest myself, out of spite as much as anything else.

Looking back as an adult, I can see what it built in me. I wasn't just switching languages four times.

I learned to read a room quickly, having been misjudged in so many of them. I moved between the directness that English classrooms rewarded and the deference that Dominican classrooms expected, and I could use both as weapons when I needed to. I became fluent in both because people kept deciding who I was before I said a word, and my defense was to prove them wrong, until they stopped testing me. I wasn't behind, and I wasn't lucky. I was proving, one room at a time, that I was more than what anyone assumed on sight, and I am still doing it.

The mishmash didn't break me. It built me. I don't fear the blank page anymore, and I was never afraid of being doubted, because I always answered back with proof.

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