Basque Cinema Gets Its Goyas Moment

Ask any Spaniard you know, and they’ll tell you the same thing: The country has its own version of the Oscars, and they’re called the Goya Awards.

Consider some of Hollywood’s favorite Spanish-speaking talent — Pedro Almodóvar, Guillermo del Toro, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas — all of them have earned at least one Goya (in Bardem’s case, the most acting Goyas ever), taken to the stage, and spoken proudly about what it means to be recognized by Spain‘s Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences in front of their peers.

The 40th Goya Awards, set for a star-studded ceremony with Susan Sarandon — this year’s international Goya Award honoree — on Feb. 28 at the Auditori Fòrum in Barcelona, will spotlight an area of the country like never before. As the Basque Country continues to leave its mark on global cinema thanks to unparalleled film and TV investment in the region, its talent is arriving at the 2026 event with a record 45 nominations, up from 25 nods the previous year.

Don’t be fooled — this hasn’t just happened. It is the product of years of hard work from creatives all over the region, including the Basque government’s culture department, its public broadcaster, ETB, as well as those behind Spain’s biggest film festival in San Sebastian, who continue to champion local cinema and burgeoning talent.

“There’s a very healthy combination of institutional support, a strong professional ecosystem, and a generation of creators with very clear, distinctive voices,” says Goya Award-nominated producer Iván Miñambres about the Basque cinema boom over the last 10 years. “Internationally, the Basque Country is increasingly seen as a strong place to produce films and to develop high-quality projects rooted in the territory.”

It helps, of course, that the region boasts a 60 percent rebate that industry professionals can claim on their productions, which increases to 70 percent if shot in the Basque language, Euskera. This not only incentivizes Basque talent to shoot at home, but international stars are being lured from all over: Catherine Zeta-Jones’ revenge thriller Hey Jackie and Nanni Moretti’s next movie It Will Happen Tonight are among the more intriguing projects to have recently shot in northern Spain.

And it’s not just A-listers reaping the rewards of the Basque Country’s investments in the sector. Miñambres, for example, has scored a nod in the best animated feature film category for his work on the black comedy-drama Decorado, and tells The Hollywood Reporter that animation is a valued craft in the region. “Animation is recognized as a strategic discipline, backed by both the Basque Government and public television,” he says.

“It’s not seen solely as a cultural expression, but also as an industry, since these are long-term projects involving a large number of technicians and artists — mostly young professionals with a high level of training and expertise.” Grants are available for development, production and internationalisation, he adds, as well as a support network that accompanies projects long-term. “All of this makes it possible to take creative risks and to bring ambitious projects to life that would otherwise be very difficult to realize.”

It’s this kind of creative freedom that has remained the driving force for Mar Izquierdo at Zineuskadi. Her business works strategically to promote the Basque audiovisual sector, partnering with every production output in the region and working with the Basque government to help facilitate co-productions, distribution and sales deals, as well as getting films a coveted slot at major fests such as Berlin, Cannes, and Venice.

“People can do bigger films, and they’re losing the fear of doing the film that they thought they were supposed to be making, because years before, they were adjusting the film to the budget they had, and now they can dream and actually do the movie that they wrote,” Izquierdo tells THR about the strides taken for Basque cinema and its mighty film output in 2025.

One of the buzzier films heading into the Goyas this year is Alauda Ruiz De Azúa’s Sundays (Los Domingos), which nabbed San Sebastian’s Golden Shell. Ruiz de Azúa’s Basque-language feature, following a 17-year-old who announces to her family she wants to become a cloistered nun, has racked up 13 Goya Award nominations — more than any other film, including those that aren’t Basque productions.

Sundays is up for best picture and Ruiz de Azúa for best director. She tells THR that the history-making record is particularly meaningful when it’s awarded to you by your colleagues: “It’s given by someone who knows how hard it is to build a movie, to defend a movie, to promote a movie, you know?”

When asked what it is that sets Basque storytelling apart, Ruiz de Azúa is full of praise for her fellow nominees, such as Jose Mari Goenaga and Aitor Arregi, whose drama Maspalomas will also compete for best picture. “It’s beautiful,” she begins, “because it’s very diverse, but also with a lot of soul. We are not so extroverted with our feelings when we make movies,” she says about the Basque people. “We really love to explore the emotional intimacy.” Miñambres concurs with that sentiment: “It’s a kind of filmmaking that doesn’t usually aim for spectacle, but rather for deep emotion,” he says to THR. “That allows itself to be personal, bold and sometimes uncomfortable, [and] that approach leads to very singular stories, films that truly connect with audiences and stay with them over time.”

The region has been full to the brim with talent for as long as Ruiz de Azúa can remember, though investment in studios, tech, and expanding crew numbers has really bolstered Basque cinema’s strength. What she does think has made an impact recently, however, is the work being put in to showcase their films around the world: “Basque cinema [has] began to travel more,” she says, referencing her 2022 directorial debut Lullaby premiering at the Berlinale and Maspalomas‘ screenings at film fests in Palm Springs, Dublin, London, São Paulo, and Greece. “We are the first generation [to] travel abroad with our cinema.”

Producer Ander Sagardoy, whose films Maspalomas, Gaua and La Misteriosa Mirada Del Flamenco have accrued nearly a third (13) of the total Goya nominations for Basque film, calls 2025 “an exceptional year” for his fellow industry members. “It doesn’t happen every year,” he says. “So we are really happy.”

Such is the wealth of production in the north of Spain that Sagardoy deems it important to differentiate between Basque productions and Basque-language films or shows. “A lot of production companies [are coming] from foreign countries,” he explains, “but also the rest of Spain are coming to the Basque Country to produce films that they could be shooting in any other place.” Despite the crowdedness and unending need for even more investment, the health of the Basque audiovisual industry, according to the producer, “is really good.”

Sagardoy admits to often feeling like a cynic about the film industry, but even he can’t deny Basque cinema’s strength at the upcoming Goya Awards. “We always try to think that our films are not defined by nominations or by prizes,” he tells THR. “But the reality is that the industry works like this… It’s important to continue believing in ourselves, but also convincing to the rest [of the world] that it is worth it to invest in these types of movies,” he adds, saying all three of his nominated projects — one following a closeted elderly man (Maspalomas), the other a witch-hunting fantasy (Gaua), and the third a 1982-set drama about an AIDS-like epidemic in a Chilean mining town (La Misteriosa Mirada Del Flamenco) — are “quite radical movies.”

And while Ruiz de Azúa is more than pleased with her box office tally for Sundays in Spain (a healthy $4.6 million), she also admits a Goya Award nomination is, as they might say in Euskera, tartaren gaineko gerezia (the icing on the cake). “It’s our Spanish Oscars!” she grins. “Susan Sarandon is coming.”