Historical Palme d’Or win for Spanish director

SPANISH director, Juanjo Gimenez, has been honoured with the Palme d’Or for the best short film at the 69^th Cannes Film Festival in France.

The short, entitled ‘Timecode,’ is only 15-minutes long but cemented the second overall win for Spanish cinema in the history for the French festival. The first and only Palme d’Or was won by legendary Spanish director, Luis Buñuel, for the film Viridiana, over half a century ago.

The director was visibly moved when awarded the title and defended the value of short films as a format with its own special meaning. He confirmed that his next feature would also be a short.

Timecode was written by the director, together with screenwriter Pere Altimira, and centres on the story of two security guards who patrol the same car park every day; some footage of existing security cameras at real parking lots was even used for the final edit of the film.

Gimenez has stated that he wanted to portray the life of ordinary people, who have dedicated their time to ordinary, perhaps slightly boring and dreary professions. Hence the short film depicts the way in which the two guards try to invent different ways of entertaining themselves in the long monotonous hours.

The Spanish director claims he based the movie on his own work experience as a clerk, performing repetitive work in a finance company; in his free time he would write stories which would eventually lead him to this momentous award at the world-famous cinematographic event.

This year the Cannes Film Festival selection committee had to review a total of 5,008 films, a massive 458 more than in 2015.