The Film Academy presents the 2022 González Sinde Award to the FiSahara Festival and its audiovisual school

The FiSahara International Film Festival, an event held in a refugee camp in the Algerian desert, and its Abidin Kaid Saleh audiovisual training school, have been recognized with the 2022 González Sinde Award.

Arrived Chagaf, director of the show and the school, and Maria Carrion, executive director of FiSahara, collected the distinction this Thursday at an event held at the Film Academy.

The president of the institution, Fernando Méndez-Leite, highlighted the “committed, vindictive and supportive” nature of these two initiatives, which the Board of Directors of the Academy rewards “for their extensive and hard-working career making visible, training and entertaining the Sahrawi population through its annual film, culture and human rights festival, and its dedication to the education of Sahrawi youth with its audiovisual school.”

The actress Melani Olivares and the producer and director Alvaro Longoria, who know the festival first-hand, dedicated a few words to them, in which they highlighted the power of cinema as a means of expression, to spread one's own culture and to generate exchange between our cinematography and Sahrawi culture. They were joined, via video, by the congratulations of the actors Juan Diego Botto, Carlos Bardem and Pepe Viyuela and the actresses Malena Alterio and Itziar Ituño.

This award that the Film Academy created in 1998 takes its name from the institution's first president, José María González Sinde, and honors the work of those institutions that, using the cinematographic medium, use it to achieve social goals. Representing the family, his son, José González Sinde, was in charge of presenting the award to Tiba Chagaf and María Carrión in this 19th edition.

The event was also attended by, among others, Eva Amaral and Juan Aguirre, members of the Amaral duo; the composer and member of Vetusta Morla, Guille Galván; the co-founders of FiSahara, the filmmaker Javier Corcuera, Pepe Taboada, and Ahmed Mohamed Fadel 'El Rubio' and the first director of the Abidin Kaid Saleh audiovisual training school, Roberto Lázaro.