Recover lost viewers, connect with the younger generations, achieve equality for women in the industry and the Academy, decentralize the institution, halve its carbon footprint, even planting forests in the emptied Spain, support independent cinema , short films, promoting training... are some of the proposals that have been repeated in the presentation of the candidacies to replace Mariano Barroso as president of the Film Academy.

Nominations that for the first time are no less than four, three of them headed by women: the actress Luisa Gavasa, the producer Valérie Delpierre, the director of photography Teresa Medina and the film director and critic Fernando Méndez-Leite, who has starred in one of the most tense but also hilarious moments of the presentation in question time.

Although women represent little more than 25% of the members of the Film Academy, a figure that some of the candidates have said they will try to change, in the four short lists that are running to replace Barroso they are the majority and in fact in two Of the candidates, the three components are women -the producer Valérie Delpierre, creator of films such as Las Niñas, is accompanied by the actress Amparo Climent and the screenwriter Alicia Luna, and the director of photography Teresa Medina, the documentary filmmaker Pilar Pérez Solano and the designer of Cristina Rodríguez wardrobe- and in another two of the three: breaking stereotypes, as they have joked, in the same candidacy are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, actress Luisa Gavasa and screenwriter Virginia Yagüe, who are accompanied by director Juan Vicente Córdoba.

In the fourth candidacy, a totem of Spanish cinema, the director, screenwriter and critic Fernando Méndez-Leite, stars in a proposal for continuity with the current director: he is accompanied by the producer Rafael Portela, currently vice president of the Film Academy with Mariano Barroso, and the actress Susi Sánchez.

Precisely the veteran of Méndez-Leite (Madrid, 1944), who has been almost everything in Spanish cinema, has been the subject of a tense scene in the presentation of candidacies. After affirming that "I have a few energy left, two fingers of forehead and an ounce of madness and I would like to dedicate them to the Film Academy", during question time for the candidates, a filmmaker launched a speech in which he reviewed the positions that Méndez-Leite has held throughout his extensive career and has concluded, surprisingly, saying that "for democratic health I ask you to leave us alone, I promise to find a committee to appoint you emeritus of Spain and Portugal" .

Méndez-Leite responded with amusement that he had forgotten to say "that for three years I was director of the ICAA, the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts and that I was able to move and talk with political parties with some ease and without contaminating myself too much. Everything The world knows that I am a hoarder and I go for it all and that I have made a fortune thanks to all these jobs," he said to the laughter of the audience.

The different candidates have praised Barroso's outgoing presidency, and in fact Luisa Gavasa has highlighted his "trail of solvency and notability, a path of solvency with which we acquire a commitment to continuity". The actress has indicated that her candidacy is committed "to a cinematography that is a cultural, social and economic reference where all the families of our cinema are represented", for a "line of action to guarantee the full and necessary equality of women" in the Academia, and for halving the sector's carbon footprint in four years, the 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide emitted by Spanish audiovisual media. They are committed to starting up the Forest of the Academy "to compensate for emissions while helping the emptied Spain".

Teresa Medina's candidacy, in which the three components are from the technical-artistic area, wants, says the director of photography, "to bring to the Academy what we feel when we make a film, the feeling of family, of everyone united to carry out the process ahead", and they are committed to the decentralization of the Academy, to training and to recovering the new generations for cinema. "The only thing that can transform reality is education and we have a serious problem, young people are moving away from theaters, they no longer have a cinematographic culture. We have to do audiovisual literacy, we must recover young people, if we don't involve the new generations no matter what we do here", they have pointed out.

For its part, the candidacy led by Valérie Delpierre, from Inicia Films, a Frenchwoman who has been in Spain for twenty years, together with the actress Amparo Climent and the screenwriter Alicia Luna, has vindicated the process of change that has taken place in the institution since the presidency of Yvonne Blake - of which Barroso was vice president - and has also opted for the decentralization of the institution, for disseminating and promoting Spanish cinema internationally, for listening to the voices of short filmmakers and helping independent cinema, for promoting exchange between "young talents and those with a professional background", and all with the words "sustainability and inclusiveness as transversal".

Fernando Méndez-Leite began his presentation with a cinephile dream: "Tonight I dreamed that Vittorio de Sica came to the Academy to present a cycle of Alex de la Iglesia, he was going to start shooting Bicycle Thieves and wanted to talk to Carla Simón to find out how the hell he had managed for Alcarràs's naturalness". And it has opted for "promoting all issues related to training, creative aid and welfare issues that can improve the situation of academics" and to provide the public with knowledge of the history and present of Spanish cinema.