Ignacio Ferreras snaps up two Spanish Goyas for Arrugas animation

Spanish director Ignacio Ferreras took home two Spanish Academy Goya Awards this week for his acclaimed movie Arrugas (Wrinkles), receiving both the Best Animated Feature and Best Adapted Screenplay honours.

Based on Paco Roca’s graphic novel, the animated 2D drama was produced by Spain’s Perro Verde Films and Cromosoma (using Toon Boom Harmony).

The movie focuses on the friendship between two pensioners, Miguel and Emilio. When Emilio’s son Juan, weary of the effects of his father’s Alzheimer’s, places him in a retirement home, the dry but cynical Miguel takes him under his wing. While Emilio is gentle and softly-spoken, Miguel, unmarried and childless, takes advantage of the other resident’s conditions to con small sums of cash out of them, much to Emilio’s consternation. The film follows the development of their friendship and their characters, exploring the issue of Alzheimer’s in a nuanced and unsentimental way.

Ferreras, whose previous work includes animated TV series Rugrats but is perhaps best known for his 2002 short How to Cope with Death, claimed that “a big concern when you are making a movie set mainly in a care home [is] whether old people will find it patronising and young people will find it uninteresting”, and that it was a 'relief' that so many people from such different age groups felt they could connect with the film.

Other awards went to Pedro Rivero and Alberto Vazquez Rico, who won the Goya for Best Animated Short for their project, Birdboy; Enrique Urbizu, who won best film, director, original screenplay and actor for his police drama No Rest for the Wicked, and Michael Hazanavicius, who took home the award for Best European feature for his film The Artist.