TACFEST 2023 Brings The Rumble To La Mancha With A Successful First Edition!

This past weekend, the city of Illescas in Toledo, Spain held the first edition of the International Toledo Action Films Festival (TACFEST). Organized by Castilla la Mancha cinema Asociation (ACCM), the event gathered films and shorts from all over the world competing on its official section to win the prized Quixote Award.

Apart from the screenings in the four days of the festival, the assistants had the chance to attend a diverse variety of activities, from seminars, conferences, or masterclasses about action script writing. In addition to that, Nacho Serapio’s directorial debut, Bullets and Katanas (which we managed to review about a year ago) had its World Premiere before its upcoming theatrical release and subsequent arrival on streaming platforms, after a succesful run for multiple festivals.

Meanwhile, George Karja and Alberto Hidalgo had the chance to present their respectives new film projects, El Duro (The Rough One) and Rough Dog,which our site’s founding editor covered back in March.

On the gala awards, Spanish short film Bouncer won the Quixote Award for National Best Short. Written, directed and starred by Spaniard actor and stuntman Carlos Robles, this action short brings the flavour of 80’s action cinema to the screen, following the story of a lonely wanderer who arrives to a new town in search for work, finding himself trapped in a a conflict where he’ll be forced to unleash his fists to survive.

The shortfilm is currently online for public viewing:

The Quixote for best International feature film went to Finnish/Iranian feature Layers of Lies, which that also won the award for Best Director. Starring and directed by Ramin Sohrab, the film was praised by all the assistants for its quality. Our own Lee Golden III has a review coming that’s been waiting in the wings for a while now and he’ll be sure to publish it as soon as he gets the greenlight!

Last and far from least, Best National Film Award went to Las Guerras del Narcotráfico: El Retorno de LJ (Narcotrafic Wars: The Return of LJ) from Eduardo Castejón, and is the conclusion of a webseries that satirizes the action genre.

The rest of winners and nods are available below:

Honorable mention:

–“Un trabajo sencillo” (A simple Job) by Fernando Verniere
–“Irumbu”

Special Award:

–“Quiero ser como Jackie Chan” (I want to be as Jackie Chan) by Andreu Kreutzer

Best Action Actor:

– Kansuke Asa, star of the short film “Seek”

Best Action Actress:

Annie Chow, for her shor film “After Her”

Best Stuntman:

-Romans Vevers, for his performance in “Not An Ordinary Mechanic”.

Best Stuntwoman:

-Annie Chow, for performance in her short film “After Her”

Best Action Cordinator:

–Shane Kosugi, for “Seek”

Best Action Choreography:

–Emerging of the shadows by Mark Stas

Best Teaser Trailer:

–Topicops by Alejandro Díaz

Best Sound Effects:

-Daniel Locicero for “After Her”

Best VFX:

– Russ Emanuel for “The Assasins Apprentice 2″

Best Teamwork

-Alain Delabie for “Borrowed Time 3″

Mike Garcia

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