Raquel Laguna/ SUCOPRESS. Spanish comedy FACE LOVE, directed by and starring Gerald Fillmore, won the Fusion Feature Audience Award at the 2026 Dances With Films Festival in Los Angeles. The FACE LOVE premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre was attended by the Executive Director of the Cervantes Institute of Los Angeles, Javier Muñoz-Basols, and the Consul General of Spain in Los Angeles, Gerardo Fueyo, who joined the cast and crew for a very special evening. The film emerged as the audience favorite at the festival, which celebrates its 29th edition this year and showcases more than 300 independent productions from around the world. Producers Andrés Sánchez, Jorge Alonso and Víctor Corrales also attended the premiere. Carlos Santos, Rafael Sigler, Laura Patalano, Vanessa Benavente, Mika Kubo and Beau Bowker joined Gerald Fillmore on the red carpet. Created as a unique parallel production and filmed twice with the same cast in English and Spanish, FACE LOVE and its Spanish-language counterpart, Amor en toda la cara, explore the challenges of modern relationships in a world increasingly shaped by technology, distance, and digital communication. Shot across Los Angeles, Madrid, London and Tijuana, the film follows Daniel, a Brit-Spaniard living in Los Angeles, who travels to Madrid to renew his visa just as a global pandemic brings international travel to a halt. Suddenly stranded thousands of miles away from his new girlfriend Ana, a Mexican-American living in Los Angeles, Daniel must navigate bureaucracy, cultural displacement, and the uncertainty of a relationship sustained entirely through video calls. Inspired by the award-winning short film Hold for Applause, which screened at more than 100 festivals worldwide and received 27 awards, FACE LOVE expands the concept into a feature-length story told entirely through simulated video calls, transforming digital limitations into a distinctive cinematic language.
