• Canarian filmmaker and screenwriter Félix Sabroso to receive the Luna de València Award tonight at the opening gala
• The creator met with audiences earlier today to reflect on the evolution of his career and reveal details about the second season of Rage (Furia).

Cinema Jove will honour filmmaker Félix Sabroso with the Luna de València Award during tonight’s opening gala. The tribute marks the beginning of an edition shaped by the recognition of one of the most versatile voices in Spanish audiovisual production, whose work spans a wide range of genres and formats.

As a prelude to the award ceremony, festival director María Albiñana joined the veteran filmmaker for a public conversation. Notably, it has been eight years since the festival last presented this distinction to a Spanish filmmaker.

During the informal discussion, Albiñana highlighted “the versatility and ability to reinvent himself without losing his essence” of a director who serves as a reference point for the festival’s four official sections. “Félix is an observer of life who explores resistance to exclusion, anger, resentment, unfulfilled desire, loneliness and the need to be seen — not only through drama, but also through comedy, which is sometimes the only way to process such emotions,” she noted.

For his part, Sabroso expressed his gratitude for the recognition and reflected on his current stage in life: “I’m in a good place because I still have the enthusiasm of those first experiences intact, but I’ve also allowed myself room for trial and error in order to refine the results. If you can maintain that sense of wonder towards reality and combine it with experience, the outcome is very powerful. I’ve now blended all the different styles through which I look at humanity, using satire and humour as my tools.”

After training as a screenwriter in Madrid and New York, Sabroso began his professional career at Televisión Española, writing for a variety of entertainment programmes. His transition into film directing and screenwriting came in 1996 with the comedy Sorry Darling, Lucas Loved Me (Perdona bonita, pero Lucas me quería a mí), created alongside Dunia Ayaso, his creative and life partner until her death in 2014.

Sabroso recalled the enduring influence of that creative partnership: “My cinema is deeply shaped by the work we did together. In fact, my solo career is shorter than the one we shared. Dunia remains very present in my life.”

Their debut feature was a major box-office success and received numerous awards, including Best Screenplay at the Mostra de València. It later inspired several stage adaptations and even a musical version.

His career gained further momentum in 1998 with the feature film A Cry in the Sky (El grito en el cielo) and his first television sitcom, Quítate tú pa’ ponerme yo. Since then, Sabroso has successfully combined film production with an extensive television career, developing both entertainment programmes and acclaimed fiction series. One notable example is Mujeres (2006), produced by El Deseo for TVE and later successfully adapted by Italy’s RAI. The Almodóvar brothers were also behind the production of his third feature film, Defrosting (Descongélate, 2003), for which he also wrote the screenplay.

Addressing the audience, Sabroso stressed that his primary motivation remains understanding human passions, regardless of the medium: “I’m endlessly curious about human nature, behaviour, fears and contradictions. The format is secondary; what truly matters is telling stories.”

Cinema, he admitted, has been “an unfaithful lover” that occasionally abandons him. His films differ greatly from one another in style and sensibility, and the long periods between projects have led him to write and direct both theatre and television. In recent years, television has become his main creative space: “I’ve fallen in love with serial storytelling because of its thematic and generic diversity. It allows you to tell stories with enormous freedom.”

Throughout his prolific career, Sabroso has continued to direct critically and commercially successful features such as The Naked Years (Los años desnudos, 2008), The Inner Island (La isla interior, 2009) and The Time of Monsters (El tiempo de los monstruos, 2015), all of which have screened at international festivals.

In the field of audiovisual production and management, Sabroso spent more than three years as Head of Fiction Content at Mediaset España, overseeing the development of over a dozen television series. He later remained at the forefront of television production through projects with companies such as Zeta Studios, Mod Producciones, Plano a Plano and Producciones Mandarina.

During the conversation, Sabroso reflected on the two extremes he has experienced throughout his career — success and failure — describing both as potentially paralysing. “When something hasn’t worked, I’ve put it aside and immediately moved on to another project. I’ve learned a great deal from failure because it has forced me to redirect myself and take new paths. I’ve never given up, not because of bravery, but because I had no other option.”

In recent years, he has been behind several milestones in Spanish television drama. In 2022, he joined the writing team of the acclaimed series Veneno, created by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo for Atresplayer, and later directed and executive-produced Fleeting Lies (Mentiras pasajeras), once again produced by El Deseo.

His most recent success is Rage (Furia), the HBO Max series he created and directed. Following its global release last year, the series received widespread critical acclaim from international publications including The New York Times, Time magazine and leading media outlets in France, Mexico and Argentina.

“Despite being conceived for a global platform, where projects can become overly driven by numbers, Rage is one of my freest and riskiest works,” Sabroso explained. “Its storytelling style is daring and constantly evolving.”

He is currently immersed in post-production on the second season, which will feature a cast led by Carmen Maura, Maribel Verdú, Ana Mena, María León, Cecilia Suárez and Clara Sans, alongside Ana Torrent and Claudia Salas, who also appeared in the first season.

According to Sabroso, the new season revolves around “the feeling that life itself is meant to be exposed and that everything is liable to become a profitable spectacle.”

The showrunner also revealed that he is already writing a third season, once again centred on a group of women. “In contemporary audiovisual fiction, women over forty are often reduced to caregivers, nurturers and providers of affection. They are rarely portrayed on the front line of social change and human impulses,” he argued.

By contrast, he described the women of Rage as “strong-willed, independent and resilient,” but also “cruel” and marked by “human flaws.” Through their stories, Sabroso seeks to portray “the decline of a system and the cruelty of a society where vested interests take precedence over emotional bonds.”

Finally, he encouraged emerging filmmakers to remain rebellious, preserve their passion for cinema and resist the algorithmic pressures imposed by streaming platforms, which he described as “the death of culture.”

“We need new Fellinis and Bertoluccis to emerge — great filmmakers with their own voice. That is perhaps the greatest challenge for a generation educated to adapt and seek convenience.”