The Santander International Film Week will celebrate its second edition from June 16 to 23

Michel Franco and Guillermo Arriaga, two of the most prestigious Mexican filmmakers, will be the first stellar guests of the SICS organized by the Centro Botín, Morena Films and the Filmoteca de Cantabria.

The II Santander International Film Week (SICS) will be celebrated from June 16 to 23 in it Botín Center and the Filmoteca de Cantabriaand will receive some of the most prominent names in the seventh art.

Confirmed among the attending personalities are two of the most prestigious Mexican filmmakers: the Oscar-nominated director, writer and screenwriter, Guillermo Arriaga; and also the director, screenwriter, and producer Michel Franco, a regular creator at the most important international festivals.

Michel Franco is the Mexican director most awarded at the Cannes Festival, where in 2017 his latest film, April's daughters, won the Special Jury Prize of the section Un Certain Regard. He also won the Best Screenplay Award for Chronic in 2015 and his second feature film, After Lucia, received the Best Film Award in Un Certain Regard in 2012. His first work, Daniel and Ana, was already selected for the Directors' Fortnight of the French competition and was distributed internationally.

These four feature films will be part of the retrospective that the SICS will dedicate to them, completed by the screening of in the eyes (2014) and its short film Between the (2003; Grand Prize at the Huesca Festival and Best Short Film at the Dresden Festival). Michel will present all his films to the public and will offer a meeting with the public and a master class for all interested parties.

In his role as producer it is worth highlighting: 600 Miles (2015), directed by Gabriel Ripstein, starring Tim Roth and winner of the award for Best First Feature at the Berlin Festival and the Ariel of the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences; and From there (2015) by Venezuelan Lorenzo Vigas and winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, among nine other awards.

The SICS will also honor the director, writer and producer Guillermo Arriaga.

Arriaga began as a novelist with Guillotine Squad and stood out for his collaboration as a screenwriter with Alejandro González Iñárritu for whom he wrote three of his first films: Love Dogs (2000), for which he received an Oscar nomination, in addition to many other international awards, 21 grams y Babel, which consolidated González Iñárritu's career as a filmmaker.

In 2005 he collaborated with Tommy Lee Jones in his directorial debut, writing the feature film The three burials by Melquiades Estrada, for which he received the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Festival.

Already in 2008 he directed his first film: The Burning Plain, starring Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence and Kim Basinger.

In 2016 Arriaga returned to the novel with the publication of The wild one with which he obtained the Mazatlán Prize for Literature in 2017.

The SICS will screen its film Far from the scorched earthwith a subsequent discussion and Guillermo Arriaga will participate in a meeting with the public as well as a master class.