The Film Academy will review its rules after a wave of resignations due to accusations by several women against a filmmaker

The resignation of more than half a dozen academics due to the presence on the screenplay commission of the Film Academy of Luis María Ferrández, a filmmaker pointed out by several women in an investigation published by elDiario.es, has caused the institution to take measures, just as the professionals who ended up abandoning had demanded. After its Assembly, the Academy sent a statement explaining that the Board of Directors “is not authorized nor has the power” to remove or expel any academic from a specialty commission. It does announce, however, that it has opened a “review process” of its statutes and regulations to provide the entity “with the necessary tools to respond to the demands of an evolving sector and society.”

In the statement, they add that “since the request to remove Luis María Ferrández from the specialty commission was transferred to the Board of Directors, all actions have been carried out in accordance with our internal regime, consultations have been made with various legal offices to have the specialized advice required in highly sensitive cases, and the issue has been addressed from various perspectives.” The result of all these actions has been unsatisfactory for the scriptwriters, since Ferrández remains, to this day, on the screenwriting specialty commission of the Film Academy.

The Academy shows its support for the victims and assures that it will expel “any aggressor reported by its victims to the Academy”, which has recently launched, together with the Ministry of Culture, the Prevention and Attention Unit against Sexist Violence in the Audiovisual and Cultural Sector.

Wave of resignations

The decision of the Academia e Cine comes after at least six screenwriters have resigned as members of the screenwriting specialty commission over the last year. Some of these people were also part of the institution’s Board of Directors. Their resignations are related to the presence of Luis María Ferrández on that commission and the inaction of the Academy. This Wednesday, the ALMA screenwriters union made these resignations public and also showed its support for the members who had made this decision.

“These resignations are motivated by the presence on said commission of Luis María Ferrández González, an academic who in 2021, according to information from elDiario.es, was accused by several women for having taken advantage of his role as a filmmaker and professor to sexually harass them” , said the ALMA statement.

The union assures that this information was brought to the attention of the Academy, which, until now, had not made any decision in this regard. As elDiario.es has learned, the discomfort over Ferrández’s presence in the script commission made several people move to try to get the institution to remove him or take, at least, some measure.

“He took advantage of me, I was very drunk, but I told him I didn’t want to have sex, I remember that well,” said one of those women in the elDiario.es investigation. Luis María Ferrández (Madrid, 1977) is a film director and producer, and has taught as a teacher at the Francisco de Vitoria University and at the TAI School of Arts in Madrid. He was a candidate for the Goya for Best Fiction Short in 2011 for ‘Hemisferio’ – starring Blanca Suárez and Hugo Silva – and author of feature films such as ‘The Night in which an Intern Met Emiliano Revilla’. In 2024 he directed the film ‘Rabios@’ and published the book The power of the story (Sekotia), in which he defends that governments and institutions “are impoverishing society in various ways” and to avoid citizen rebellion “they have created a fictional story that has its own language based on guilt, victimhood, etc. and that they use to talk to us about safety, the environment….”

The intrastory

It was on June 4, 2022 when Fernando Méndez Leite was elected the new president of the Film Academy. It was not the only vote that the General Assembly, the highest body of the Academy, made then: it also renewed part of the members of its specialty commissions. And it is there, in the script commission, where an uncomfortable name slipped in, that of Luis María Ferrández, the filmmaker whom several women pointed out three years ago in an information published in elDiario.es.

As this media has learned, Ferrández’s arrival to the commission caused great discomfort among some members and, finally, in November 2023 the Board of Directors voted for his expulsion. However, the votes that supported expelling the filmmaker were not enough to reach the necessary qualified majority and Luis María Ferrández remained a member of the Academy’s script commission.

As an academic, Ferrández was able to run in the June 2022 elections to be part of the script commission. These specialty commissions hold elections every two years in which 50% of their members are renewed. Luis María Ferrández was one of the three people who showed up. Although academics can vote for whoever they want in that specialty even if they do not expressly appear in the elections, those who are candidates usually have a better chance of receiving votes. This is how Ferrández joined the commission, at the same time as the screenwriters Lola Salvador and Yolanda García Serrano.

His arrival caused discomfort among the members who knew the testimonies about Ferrández’s behavior. It was then that conversations and meetings began to try to get him to take a step back and leave the commission, to avoid reputational damage to the Academy but also because some women considered it uncomfortable to have to deal with him. However, the objective was not achieved. As elDiario.es has learned, the president of the Academy himself, Fernando Méndez Leite, met with Ferrández, who continued to cling to his right to remain in his position after having been voted in the elections and who throughout the time has denied the facts.

Finally, the matter was formally raised to the Board of Directors. Article 11 of the Academy’s statutes establishes the reasons why members may cease to be members. One of them is an agreement of the Board of Directors adopted by a two-thirds majority of its members, “after hearing the interested party.” That was the process initiated by the Board, which received Luis María Ferrández in audience. On December 30, 2023, the Board voted for his expulsion. Although the majority voted in favor of separating the filmmaker from the academy, the necessary votes were not obtained to reach that two-thirds majority.

Since then, the cascade of resignations has been growing. After the two people from the script commission who held positions on the Board of Directors of the Academy left their positions, the turn to enter the governing body of the institution corresponded, precisely, to Luis María Ferrández. However, Ferrández never became part of the Board of Directors without the institution explaining why.