The Spanish comedy The Good Boss (El buen patrón) has won four awards at the Platino Awards ceremony for Ibero-American cinema. Organized annually since 2014 by EGEDA (Society for Audiovisual Producers Rights Management) and FIPCA (Ibero-American Federation of Film and Audio-visual Producers), these awards promote Ibero-American films internationally.
The Good Boss by Fernando León de Aranoa took the Award for Best Fiction Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor (Javier Bardem). These trophies confirm its success which began when it won several awards at last February’s Goyas.
Set in a provincial Spanish town, the film’s central character is an entrepreneur, played by Javier Bardem, who makes industrial scales. Desperate to win a local award for excellence he stops at nothing, first abusing his staff and then firing them.
The film is described as a satire of the world of work with important social content. “Humour helps to reach out to the audience,” says Javier Bardem, “to tell them something that can move them, make them want to empathise with the world we are trying to convey with its harsh realities.” The Good Boss continues a theme already tackled in an earlier film by the director, Mondays in the Sun (2002), where the difficulties of the world of work were approached from the angle of unemployment.
Sources : Cineuropa, Screen Daily, Premios Platino
