The Barcelona Film Fest 2026 took place between April 16th and 24th. I was accredited with a pass and attended the morning media walls and the red carpet galas, shooting international film industry professionals who were invited to the festival events and also cover the ambience of what that looks like from inside.


Press photography is not my main field. My approach to photographing people is controlling the set and narrative as much as possible and obviously there was already a photographer doing the official portraits with his set in a suite at the hotel that held all press junkets.
So I had a badge and a camera but celebrities had super tight schedules, press office watching after them... I couldn’t do much amidst a clockwork-like planning.


But I could get on the good side of press officers and have a couple celebs... for a minute or two. Which might sound enough but I realized it’s a very short time to get “my” picture (or so I thought). The sun upstairs was harsh and the media interviews were on the first floor with barely any daylight available... except for a corridor with a window.

María Valverde
Carlos Cuevas / Fatih Akin / Dafne Fernández

... Needless to say, I couldn’t have that one minute with Willem Dafoe







Stay well.