The Berlin Festival and the Consolidation of Quinqui Film

On February 20, 1981, three days before the military coup that was about to dismantle the process of the Spanish political transition toward the consolidation of a democratic state, Saura's 14th feature film Deprisa, deprisa (1980) (Fast, fast) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. Vicente Molina Foix in his article about the festival for the magazine Fotogramas highlighted the wide presence of Spanish representatives with the director, scriptwriter and Spanish producer Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi at the head as president of the jury of that Berlinale. The large Spanish presence in that category was completed with the contest in the official section of Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón and his film Maravillas (1980) with the screening in the information section of Manderley (1981) by Jesús Garay and La campanada (1980) by Jaime Camino, and with the exhibition in the parallel market of the festival of Navajeros (1980) by Eloy de la Iglesia, Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980) (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom) by Pedro Almodóvar, La mano negra (1980) (The Black Hand) by Fernando Colomo and Arrebato (1979) (Rapture) by Iván Zulueta. In the end, that category of the Berlin Festival would serve to consolidate a film subgenre as properly Spanish as quinqui film when awarding its highest award, the Oso de Oro, to Deprisa, deprisa. The film, a Spanish-French coproduction, combined the talent, career and international prestige of Saura with nonprofessional performers who had experienced their first contact with film, and in many cases would be the last.