Dao, a three-hour film by the French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis, has won the Golden Spike (Espiga de Oro) at the 71st Valladolid International Film Week (Seminci), the festival announced on Saturday 31 October. The Silver Spike went to Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva, and the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso was named best director for La libertad doble. Twenty-two features competed in the official section of the festival, which ran from 23 to 31 October and closes on Saturday with the Spanish premiere of Gael García Bernal’s Hombre al agua.
Key facts
- Golden Spike: Dao (Alain Gomis; France, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau)
- Silver Spike: La Gradiva (Marine Atlan; France, Italy); special mention to Aquí (Tiago Guedes; Portugal, France). Best director: Lisandro Alonso, La libertad doble (Chile, Argentina, Luxembourg, Germany, UK)
- Best actress: Alba Rohrwacher, A Good Little Soldier (Stéphane Brizé); best actor: Swann Arlaud, A Man of His Time (Notre salut, Emmanuel Marre)
- Audience award: Rose (Markus Schleinzer); FIPRESCI prize: I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming (Isabelle Stever). The festival reports a provisional 100,000 admissions
The official section
Dao cuts between two gatherings in two countries: a wedding in France, in a family of African descent, and a funeral rite in Guinea-Bissau. Gomis mixes fictional characters with real people and testimony from the community to tell the stories of those who left and those who stayed. The film runs 185 minutes and is in French, Wolof, Manjak and Guinea-Bissau Creole. It is produced by Les Films du Worso, Srab Films, Yennenga Productions, Nafi Films and Telecine Bissau Produções, and sold by The Party Film Sales; Flamingo has it for Spain. According to its Seminci page, it played in the Berlinale’s official section earlier this year.
The jury, made up of the Italian producer Francesca Andreoli, the French composer Grégoire Hetzel, the programmer and writer Dennis Lim, the Spanish director and producer Elena Manrique and the Uruguayan-Spanish director Federico Veiroj, praised a form that moves freely between fiction and documentary, in which, they said, rhythm, duration and movement build an atmosphere that is both intimate and immersive.
Gomis, born in Paris in 1972, won the Silver Leopard at Locarno with his debut L’Afrance (2001). His Félicité won the jury grand prize at the Berlinale in 2017 and was Senegal’s Oscar entry, and in 2018 he founded the Yennenga Centre in Dakar, a cultural space and film school set up to build production and post-production capacity in West Africa. Yennenga Productions is one of the producers of Dao.
La Gradiva also took the editing prize, for Guillaume Lillo, and the Espiga Arcoíris, Seminci’s LGBTQ+ award. Alonso’s La libertad doble, which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes this year, returns 25 years later to Misael Saavedra, the woodcutter at the centre of his first feature, La libertad (2001). It is sold by Luxbox and released in Spain by Atalante. Emmanuel Marre’s A Man of His Time (Notre salut), which won best screenplay in competition at Cannes in May and was shown at Seminci as Un hombre de nuestro tiempo, took both best actor for Swann Arlaud and the cinematography award for Olivier Boonjing. Sandra Wollner won best screenplay for Everytime.
The other sections
In Punto de Encuentro, the section for new directors, the top prize went to 9 Temples to Heaven by Thailand’s Sompot Chidgasornpongse, a co-production between eight countries and territories including Qatar. The Alquimias Grand Prize went to Ivan Marković’s Promised Spaces (France, Germany, Serbia, Cambodia), with a special mention for David Baute’s Benigno, which also took the Espiga Verde environmental award.
The Tiempo de Historia documentary section gave its Grand Prize to Alea Jacarandas by the Algerian director Hassen Ferhani (Algeria, France) and a special prize to Mariano Llinás’s Biografía de Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina). The DOC. España award went to Eloy Enciso’s Todo es cárcel, and the Pilar Miró prize for best Spanish director to Sebastián Uría for Adiós, ríos. Claudia Estrada Tarascó’s Salen las lobas won both the youth award and the Punto de Encuentro audience award, and Lithuanian director Arnas Balčiūnas’s Class Photo won the Golden Spike for short film.
At MERCI, the festival’s independent film market, the La Meseta distribution awards went to the Spanish release campaigns for Salen las lobas, by Silencio Cinema (first prize, €5,000), and La Gradiva, by Elástica Films (second prize, €4,000).
Full list of winners
International Official Section – Golden Spike: Dao, Alain Gomis (France, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau) – Silver Spike: La Gradiva, Marine Atlan (France, Italy) – Ribera del Duero award for best director: Lisandro Alonso, La libertad doble (Chile, Argentina, Luxembourg, Germany, UK) – Best actress: Alba Rohrwacher, A Good Little Soldier (France) – Best actor: Swann Arlaud, A Man of His Time (Notre salut; France, Belgium) – Renault Group award for best cinematography: Olivier Boonjing, A Man of His Time – Miguel Delibes award for best screenplay: Sandra Wollner, Everytime (Austria, Germany) – José Salcedo award for best editing: Guillaume Lillo, La Gradiva – Special mention: Aquí, Tiago Guedes (Portugal, France)
Punto de Encuentro – Punto de Encuentro award: 9 Temples to Heaven, Sompot Chidgasornpongse (Thailand, France, Singapore, Norway, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Qatar) – FUNDOS special award: Cinemanía, Marc Ferrer (Spain) – ESCAC award: Forest High, Manon Coubia (Belgium, France)
Alquimias – Alquimias Grand Prize: Promised Spaces, Ivan Marković (France, Germany, Serbia, Cambodia) – Special mention: Benigno, David Baute (Spain)
Tiempo de Historia – Tiempo de Historia Grand Prize: Alea Jacarandas, Hassen Ferhani (Algeria, France) – Special prize: Biografía de Jorge Luis Borges, Mariano Llinás (Argentina) – DOC. España award: Todo es cárcel, Eloy Enciso (Spain) – Special mention: At Night, Beatrice Gibson (UK, France)
Other feature awards – Pilar Miró award for best Spanish director: Sebastián Uría, Adiós, ríos (Spain) – Seminci Joven award: Salen las lobas, Claudia Estrada Tarascó (Spain, Belgium, Denmark) – Miniminci award: Momonsters. Película de Navidad, Javier Martínez and Christian Garnez (Spain)
Short films – Golden Spike for short film: Class Photo, Arnas Balčiūnas (Lithuania) – Silver Spikes: Primer fuego, Blanca Camell Galí (France, Spain); Crónica del cansancio, Natalia Marín (Spain) – Best European short: Pithead, Wannes Vanspauwen and Pol De Plecker (Belgium, France) – Best Spanish short: L’enterrament de la sardina, Mariona Martínez (Spain) – Castilla y León en Corto award: Under the Lake, Juan Carlos Mostaza (Spain)
Special awards – Espiga Arcoíris: La Gradiva, Marine Atlan – Espiga Verde: Benigno, David Baute – FIPRESCI prize: I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, Isabelle Stever (Germany, Ukraine) – Audience award, International Official Section: Rose, Markus Schleinzer (Austria, Germany, France) – Audience award, Punto de Encuentro: Salen las lobas, Claudia Estrada Tarascó
Youth jury awards – International Official Section: Queen at Sea, Lance Hammer (UK, US) – Punto de Encuentro: A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, Jacqueline Lentzou (Greece, Germany, France) – Short film: El tamagochi escarlata, Francisco Visceral Rivera (Chile)
MERCI, La Meseta distribution awards – First prize (€5,000): Salen las lobas, campaign by Silencio Cinema – Second prize (€4,000): La Gradiva, campaign by Elástica Films
Seminci’s press release and winners page differ on two spellings (“Oliver” and “Olivier” Boonjing, “Coubia” and “Cubia”). We use Olivier Boonjing and Manon Coubia, as in the Cannes and Berlinale credits.
Our reading
Seminci’s top prizes went to co-productions that reach well beyond Europe. Dao is a French, Senegalese and Bissau-Guinean film that counts among its producers Yennenga Productions, which shares its name with the Dakar centre Gomis set up to build production and post-production in West Africa, and the documentary prize went to an Algerian film. Latin America was well represented too, with Alonso’s directing prize and the special award for Llinás, days after São Paulo’s Mostra gave its fiction award to a Colombian drama. 9 Temples to Heaven, which won Sompot the director prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, adds a second prize. For the home industry, Dao, La libertad doble and La Gradiva already have Spanish distributors, and the La Meseta awards put money behind release campaigns rather than production, in a year when the ICAA has shared €31.5m in selective aid between 70 film projects. The next test for Dao is its Spanish release with Flamingo.
Sources
- Seminci, ‘Dao’, de Alain Gomis, Espiga de Oro de la 71 Seminci (press release, 31 October 2026)
- Seminci, Premios 2026 (full list of winners)
- Seminci film page: Dao
- Seminci film page: La libertad doble
- Seminci, MERCI closes with the La Meseta distribution awards (30 October 2026)
- Seminci, programme announcement: 208 films, 22 features in competition
- Berlinale, Forest High (Forêt ivre)
- Festival de Cannes, Notre salut (A Man of His Time)