¿How did I get to be the mayor? with Jón Gnarr
Jón Gnarr Kristinsson was the mayor of Reykjavik from 2010 to 2014 without any previous political experience. During his mandate he attended gay pride parades cross-dressed, and he forced the coalition party to watch The Wire. He got re-elected in 2014, but Jón Gnarr didn’t want to hear about power anymore and got out of politics. But, ¿how did Jón Gnarr get elected and re-elected?
This Icelandic giant is one of the most popular comedians in his country. He started off his career on the radio and quickly moved on to public TV as a screenwriter and actor in series such as Næturvaktin (The Night Shift) and satire programs. Following that line he decided to bring humor to new heights and he formed the Best Party to run for mayor of Reykjavik. Turns out he won. It was 2010 and he had just received two Edda awards (the Icelandic Oscars) for two comedies. The jester was now sitting on the throne.
After that, he would go on to make a farce out of what he learnt there in a series titled Borgarstjórinn (The Mayor, 2016), which Serielizados Fest will premiere in Spain to get this session started. After the screening of the first episode, Jón Gnarr himself will chat with journalist Oriol de Balanzó with a subject matter: ¿How did I get to be the mayor?
Session in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish.
Galician ‘Narcos’ with Nacho Carretero
Investigative journalist Nacho Carretero (A Coruña, 1981) wrote Fariña: Stories and investigations from the Galician drug trade in 2015 and the book went below the radar for three years (and two editions) to suddenly become the most sought out in 2018 after a judge’s decision to seize it.
“I hope the experience proves at least how useless and unsuccessful it is to seize a book”, said Carretero when, after five months, the judge lifted the ban on Fariña. Indeed, that judicial blunder didn’t do much other than turning the book into a best seller and making its TV adaptation (Bambú producciones) a huge success. We should almost thank them.
Nacho Carretero will come to Serielizados fest on Friday the 28th to top off this wonderful double bill with a talk called Galician ‘Narcos’, in which he will consider how the Netflix hit would have been if it had taken Fariña into account. Which is to ask: What incidence did the galician capos have in the rise of Colombian drug traffic? After his talk, we will open microphones so that Carretero can answer to the audience’s questions.
