On September 6th in the Academy of Sciencies and Cinematographic Arts of Spain headquarters, actor Daniel Grao has informed about the chosen film in representing Spain for the Oscars 2019, in the Foreign Language Film category. During last three months, academic members had voted one of these three films: “Todos lo saben” (Asghar Farhadi), “Handía” (Aitor Arregi&Jon Garaño) and “Campeones” (Javier Fesser).
Finally, the last one is the chosen for such an honor. The spanish box-office earnest comedy of the year -more than 17 million euros and over 3 million viewers- will have to wait until next January 23th to know if it would be nominated, competing for the Award on February 24th. Spanish’s Academy has granted this way this self-improvement story and this integration praise. Double Goya Award winner, Javier Gutiérrez, plays the leading role supported by handicapped actors.
Last August, director Javier Fesser said if the film is finally nominated next February, he would go to LA for promotion with “all the guys”. A well deserved gift for those champions. If the film would made it to the final nominees, it would be the second nomination for Fesser, since 2007 short film “Binta y la gran idea”.
The film’s plot is Marco Montes’s story (Gutiérrez), an assistant coach in the basketball national league, whom, since getting fired due to personnal and professional problems, and crashing his car against a police car, is sentenced to 90 days of community services, training a handicapped basketball team.
Since the announcement was given, social network got plenty of congratulations to the staff, and gratittudes messages from them. There’s no spanish films nominated in this category since 2004 “Mar adentro” (Alejandro Amenábar), film that won the Award. Likewise, it would be the eleventh year since Penélope Cruz won the last Award for Spain, with her 2008 Best supporting actress for “Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona”.
