Sandra Lipski on Filmmaking, Location and Founding Mallorca Film Festival – Jennifer Green interviews

When actor-writer-director Sandra Lipski made her first short film, she wanted to send it to a local festival in Mallorca, where she grew up. She discovered there wasn’t one. “It just really shocked me, because there’s literally a festival, as you know, in every little, tiny town,” she says. “And I just couldn’t believe that this beautiful island didn’t have one.” So, she decided to start her own. “I thought, well, why not just try it?” And that’s how Spain’s Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival (EMIFF) came into being in 2012. It wrapped its twelfth edition on Oct. 24.

Lipski describes how an early boost for the event came in the form of a visit from Danny DeVito and his producer partner/son Jake in 2015, helping put the festival on the international radar. They pushed through COVID with outdoor screenings: “People were very, very grateful because many of the filmmakers who came were like, well, this is the only festival that is happening.” Now, she says, EMIFF has “started to play a little bit more in the big league.”

Lipski was born in Germany but raised from the age of nine on Mallorca, one of Spain’s Balearic Islands. Though she splits her time between Spain and Los Angeles, she says she feels the pull of Europe, where she and her husband both have family.

That fits with her professional plans because now that this year’s festival has wrapped, she can turn to her next project, which is extending her 2022 short film Mi Isla into what will be her debut feature as a writer and director. She calls it a cross between Under the Tuscan Sun and Ladybird, “a coming-of-age mother-daughter story.”

Lipski spoke with AWFJ the morning after the 2023 festival’s closing night gala, where Mads Mikkelsen and Susanne Bier received acting and directing awards, respectively. Other talent on hand at this year’s edition included award recipients, like actor Daniel Brühl, director Isabel Coixet and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, and high-profile jury members, including producer Nurhan Sekerci-Porst, American Cinematographer editor Stephen Pizzello, actress-producer Rosie Fellner and IFC executive Nicole Weis.

Jennifer Green: Spain has been making such an effort in the last few years especially to increase incentives to attract more international film productions, and it really seems to be having an effect. Does that impact the festival?

Sandra Lipski: For sure. It just gives visibility to the island. So now, for example, if we send an invitation to Zoe [Saldana, who recently filmed Paramount’s Special Ops: Lioness on the island] or other actors who have shot here before, then that makes a huge difference. They already have a connection to the island. Like this year, last night was our closing night and we honored Susanne Bier, the Oscar-winning director from Denmark, and she had directed The Night Manager here in Mallorca, so when she got our invite, it was kind of like homecoming for her, because she had worked on the island and really loved it and was so excited to be back.

And then also last night, we had Mads Mikkelsen, and he received the Best Actor Award for his new movie, The Bastard, and he has a house here so he likes to support everything. We have this community of really amazing filmmakers who have a connection to the island that obviously we’re taking advantage of in a positive way.

JG: The theme or logo for the festival is “Bridging Cultures – Bridging People.” Can you talk to me about what that signifies?

SL: The first couple of years, the press journalists would always ask me, what’s the festival about? Is there a theme? And I was always so reluctant to answer that because it’s an international festival. Sundance doesn’t have a theme; the Berlinale doesn’t have a theme or a tagline.

But then one day it just came to me. It’s the festival. It’s very much a reflection of me and my life. I grew up so international and what I want to create for this island and what I want the festival to be and what it has become is this melting pot of languages and nationalities of filmmakers that all meet in this one place.

“Bridging Cultures – Bridging People” is like this overlaying theme that we see in our guests, where they come from and the work they do, but also in the programming. We like to have movies that have more than one language and show different cultures and countries. So it kind of all ties in.

JG: Apart from Danny DeVito, what are some other highlights over the last 12 years, or your best memories from the festival?

SL: It was really great that we had Melissa Leo with us in 2018. That was also the first year that Mads Mikkelsen was with us. And she did an acting masterclass where she had the entire festival laying on the floor and doing strange animal noises. That was a first for all, and I’ll never forget that.

Asif Kapadia was here, I think it was 2019 when we had a little bit more of a focus on documentary and we did a special screening of Amy. That was really great. We had Wim Wenders. That was really, really great too. Those are some highlights for sure.

JG: Your date is very smart because it’s after all of the big fall festivals, and obviously the location is a draw, but is it difficult in the whirlwind of festival and awards season to get people to come and films to show at the festival?

SL: No, I think actually people are really using it in a very smart way to get more attention. Last year, our opening night film was Triangle of Sadness with Ruben Östlund, who then went on to get three Oscar nominations. The film also played in San Sebastian, but he didn’t go, nobody from the movie went to San Sebastian. He did all his international press here in Mallorca with us.

[Same with] Daniel Brühl. He was in the closing night film, The Movie Teller by Lone Scherfig, and he just had the 19th, that’s the only time he had to do press, and he did like three hours of press for that movie at our festival. He said, ‘I want to promote this film. This is my chance.’

Of course, we are always, I wouldn’t even say competing because I don’t want to compete with San Sebastian, but obviously they usually get first dibs on Spanish premieres and bigger films, but not everybody goes there. It’s happened a couple of times, like in 2018 on Arctic, the movie with Mads Mikkelsen. It had a premiere at San Sebastian, but he came to Mallorca to show it and did press here.

JG: Do you have any plans already in motion for next year?

SL: Well, I’m a day after closing night… But this is the first time after the festival that I feel proud. Maybe that’s strange, but I’ve had the same team for three years now. The first year, nobody knew what they were doing, they were getting into their jobs. Last year was a little bit better. But this year everyone just nailed it. And we were such a well-oiled machine, and everything had a flow to it. That took a lot of anxiety out of the team, which was then not projected onto guests…

It was such a great atmosphere this year, and I’m just striving to create that again for next year and keep that going – keep the team really happy and feeling supported so we can project that onto our guests and have them feel really, really great.