The Circuit

by Maria Alvarez Rilla
News broke Friday night that Nacho Vigalondo's "Time Crimes" has taken top honors at Austin's Fantastic Fest, scooping the AMD Best Feature plaudit and an Audience Award silver medal.

He's an adopted Basque: the Spanish helmer's been working mano a mano for years with the spruce, gentlemanly Bilbao producer Eduardo Carnero. They won a best short Academy Award nom with "7:35 in the Morning" in 2005. Now they're making waves with Vigalondo's long feature debut.

"Time Crimes" has been a Spanish-language blogsphere smash since the get-go, thanks to its helmer's cult status as a director and a blogger.

As a sci-fi and jigsaw aficionada, I loved the wit of this time-paradox jigsaw. Basque thesp Karra Elejalde ("Airbag", "Mutant Action") is breathtaking as a time-traveller-caring-hubby Hector, and Barbara Goenaga ("Sylvia's Gift") is simply wonderful as a perturbing bike riding nymph.

An enthusiastic Harry Knowles review followed "Crimes" Austin's world premier. To Vigalondo's delight, Peter Martin at Twitchfilm misspelled Vigalondo as "Vigilando" (watching). "It's the perfect name for my hidden identity as a superhero," he blogged. We agree.

Sitges starts Thursday. "Time Crimes" competes. We will be Vigilando, Nacho.

Full list of Fantastic Fest winners here.

Watch Nacho at Fantastic Fest: