You have to distance yourself to understand the major challenge: at the end of the 20th century, the Gijón festival was an auteur film festival, although without great flights, when one of the members of the press department, José Luis Cienfuegos (who died yesterday Tuesday at the age of 60), at the age of 31, took charge of its direction in 1995. And yes, Gijón was the city of Xixón Sound, and there was a rock and transgressive cultural effervescence, but no one could imagine that Gijón would be the European Sundance in a few years. Nobody, except José Luis. Today in the cinema the Rotterdam and Locarno competitions are talked about as incubator events for auteur cinema. Between the late nineties and until 2010 there was only Gijón. And it was exciting, vibrant and for those of us who went there, impressive. A trip to the Shangri-La of the best cinema.
In that Gijón, with, among others, Fran Gayo as programmer, and Pepe Colubi, as press chief, one came across Tom DiCillo, Lodge Kerrigan, Hal Hartley or Todd Solondz, with a young Santiago Miter; In the cinemas, Pawel Pawlikowski, still looking for his place in the world, appeared to talk about his films, a newcomer Jonás Trueba, Lisandro Alonso, Kimberly Pierce, Darren Aronofsky, Virginie Despentes, Chloë Sevigny, Fatih Akin, Harmony Korine, Kenneth Anger, Olivier Assayas, Mia Hansen-Løve, Ulrich Seidl, Pedro Costa and Lukas Moodysson, or a actress who jumped into direction—Valérie Donzelli—to tell the story of her son’s fight against the cancer that destroyed his marriage. Aki Kaurismäki could be seen asking with his loud voice for another glass of (the only thing he knew how to say in Spanish at the time) Sovereign. Also, the destruction of two hotel rooms of the now deceased French actor Guillaume Depardieu (who was expelled when he tried to attack Cienfuegos, the blow was intercepted by the bodyguard that his father, Gérard, had paid). Gijón showed the new trends in cinema and predicted, always correctly, those that would succeed.
And yet, those festivals were not just about film. Cienfuegos embraced the idea of a cultural event in all its breadth: every night there were concerts, it opened a space for the feminist gathering Les Comadres, and it promoted exhibitions. And a problem for cinema in 2025 has already emerged: either young people were educated in the love of this art or they would get lost on the way to the theaters. It even included a legendary and ambitious cycle, directed by his great friend, Vicente Domínguez, professor of Philosophy at the University of Oviedo: the Universo Media, each edition dedicated to a topic (fear, hallucination, pain, taboo) through talks and analysis by experts in very different fields and only its representation in cinema.
That happiness ended when he was fired in January 2012 after Álvarez Cascos’s party, Foro Asturias, came to power in the city. After 17 years of management of Cienfuegos, the Gijón event, converted into that European Sundance, had reached 80,000 spectators, the 12th of the year. ranking by public at that time in Europe, despite the fact that in terms of budget it was behind other Spanish events. Cienfuegos remembered how part of the city never understood the solidity and resonance of the bet: on local television they disgraced him in a live colloquium that he would not have brought Sofía Loren to the red carpet. He did like the classics, but in the style of Richard Fleischer, Julien Temple or Karel Reisz. They did set foot, by the way, in Gijón.
Four hundred filmmakers signed a manifesto in their support. It didn’t help at all. In return, that was won by the Seville European Film Festival, where Cienfuegos was hired months later, to rewrite the contest, to dream of something similar to what happened with Gijón.
For the second time, the Asturian reinvented a film contest, expanded the event, and moved to the Andalusian capital so that they would understand that he was not a parachutist. He involved local filmmakers and the Sevillian cultural world in general so that they assumed that this festival was also theirs. He did it. The sessions were full again. The European Film Academy announced its candidacies there and the continent’s creators set foot in Triana. The cultural manager fought against obstacles such as bureaucracy and the need to explain to international film creators and sellers in Cannes and Berlin (fishing places for their programming) why it was interesting for their films to be seen at the end of the year at their festival. And with their films, another myriad of different, fascinating and groundbreaking filmmakers ended up on the banks of the Guadalquivir.
In Seville, aware of the limit of being focused on European cinema, Cienfuegos relied on the jewels of the Berlinale and Cannes and on the explosion of what was then called “other Spanish cinema.” He created sections for new narratives, and continued with his obsession: that young people would step into the theaters and discover that there were films for them.
In 2023, it reached its last destination, the Seminci in Valladolid, a festival that had carried out its own revolution at the turn of the century with Fernando Lara as director between 1984 and 2004: Cienfuegos considered himself a disciple of Lara’s ways of doing things. Again, reinvention; again, understanding with politicians who, although the manager was not of their ideology, did know how to support the vision of Cienfuegos; again, obsession with showing youth the enjoyment of the venues and connecting with the local cultural fabric. Last year it programmed a fascinating series with new cinema indie American, and those called to win the Oscar within a decade visited Valladolid. Everything, sense of smell of José Luis. The last edition, the 70th, closed on November 1 with more than 103,000 spectators.
Cienfuegos created a way of programming: Fran Gayo (who died last May), Alejandro Díaz Castaño and Tito Rodríguez (director and head of programming, respectively, of the revived Gijón festival) and Javier H. Estrada (head of programming at Seminci) have grown up with him. As a cultural manager he was hyper-demanding, intuitive, overwhelming, obsessive-compulsive with his programming, without filters or schedules at work, a huge pusher to bring more and better films to his events, always attentive to official roles and to ensure that his festivals had the best possible consideration by the Administrations… His teams loved him and hated him because he demanded from them what he had previously asked of himself, maximum excellence.
Now, when the result was good, it was a team success. This journalist has shared three decades of friendship, discussions (the EL PAÍS Style Book drove him crazy), confidences over beers, crazy nights and days of overflowing cinephilia, infamous schedules at big festivals, laughter, existential bitterness and walks on the run. No more calls that ended with his quick “haha, hala, bye, bye.” With his death, Europe loses one of the great film managers; Spain, to a man who fought for people to enjoy his passion, cinema.