Javier Alvariño returns to the cinema through the front door: Goya for Best Art Direction for 'The Red Virgin'

The feeling of suffocation and control that underpins the plot of 'The Red Virgin' is reflected in an elegant artistic section by Javier Alvariño and his team that has convinced the members of the Film Academy, which has allowed him to win the Goya 2025 for Best Artistic Direction.

With a career linked to filmmakers with as much personality as Paco Plaza (Veronica, Who kills with iron) or Jaume Balaguero, Alvariño had been away from the front lines of cinema for several years. Focused, like so many others, on the world of television fiction (The neighbor, I don't like driving, Stories to keep you from sleeping) once again took on the challenge of the big screen with the help of Paula Ortiz, who proposed a period film with a particularly unique approach in that the relationship between the two protagonists was capable of creating a close atmosphere with terror.

Supported by the “exquisite aesthetic taste” of the filmmaker, Alvariño has worked intensely to give personality to the project, from the conceptual phases to the construction of the set, in which 12 weeks were invested. The spaces, apart from the treatment of direction and photography, were designed so that the use of light could shape them to convey completely different sensations. This is how the creative exemplifies it: “When Macarena disappears, the source of light and humanity in that house, the color that that character transmits fades and disappears.”

Beyond recognizing the performance of his own team, the art director has highlighted the human and professional quality of the members of the different departments of The Red Virgin, something "unusual": "Although we all know that film work consists of getting rid of the ego and, in this case, letting yourself be carried away by the director, it is something difficult. In this case, there have been some really exciting exercises in contribution, listening and negotiation." Paula Ortiz's film, despite having nine nominations, has only won two Goya Awards: Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, won by Arantxa Ezquerro.

Access to the Goyas 2025 Special in Panorama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox2LarKRbgc