MUMBAI: The Spanish Film Academy‘s Goya Awards will be handed out in a gala ceremony on 14 February in Madrid.

Among the 28 categories, three have been earmarked for short films and an honorary Goya award for director Antonio Mercero.

Daniel Monzon‘s prison drama Cell 211 and Alejandro Amenabar‘s Agora led the pack with 16 and 13 nominations respectively, including all the main categories of the 24th Goya Awards.

The two films will vie for the top categories of best film and director opposite Fernando Trueba‘s The Dancer and the Thief with nine nominations and Juan Jose Campanella‘s The Secret in Their Eyes with eight. 

The nominations for 2010 divvy up the biggest nods among a half-dozen titles, like Daniel Sanchez Arevalo‘s Gordos with eight nominations; Sigfrid Monleon‘s The Consul of Sodoma with six and Pedro Almodovar‘s Broken Embraces with five.

Penelope Cruz will have a tough fight in the actress category for her role in Almodovar‘s Embraces and will be pitted against Maribel Verdu for her role in Francis Ford Coppola‘s mystery Tetro, Rachel Weisz in Agora and Lola Duenas from Me Too.

Argentine actor Ricardo Darin has been nominated in the actor category for his role in Dancer and the Thief while his competitors in the category are Luis Tosar for Cell 211, Jordi Molla for Consul of Sodoma and Antonio de la Torre for Gordos.

The Goya nominations were selected from the 120 Spanish and Latin films released in Spain between 1 December, 2008, and 31 December, 2009.