Spain

A tangled five-way lesbian dramedy. A moral tale that happens in the bathrooms, the beds and the streets of Barcelona. A film that starts when Zaida returns to the city after a breakup.Read More »

Synopsis
A grand banquet in honor of a sports association of anglers is being prepared in a restaurant, but several circumstances seem to have conspired to boycott the event.
Berlin Golden Bear Award Winner 1978Read More »

Synopsis:
Etzel, the son of prosecutor Wolf Andergast, discovers that eight years ago his father condemned Léonard Maurizius to a life sentence in prison for the murder of his wife Elisabeth. The case made Andergast famous but Etzel knows that Maurizius’s conviction depended on the dubious testimony of a witness named Grégoire Waremme. Determined to find out the truth, Etzel tracks Waremme down to Zurich and discovers that the evidence he gave at the trial was not the whole truth…Read More »

Plot:
In the Salta Province in 1817 during the War of Independence, the irregular forces commanded by General Martín Güemes carry out a guerrilla action against the Spanish army. The commander of a Spanish army contingent, Lieutenant Villarreal, is wounded, captured by the guerrillas, and put under the medical care of Asunción, the mistress of an estancia. She finds out from his idenfication paper that the Lieutenant, though serving in the Spanish army, was born in Lima. She persuades him of the justice of liberating America from Spain. The patriot forces receive help from the sacristan of a chapel located next to the grounds of the royalist troops. The sacristan fakes loyalty to the king, but during the battles he sends messages to the gaucho guerrillas hiding in the mountains by means of a messenger boy and by ringing of the bell.Read More »

Quote:
Rosa (Broken Embraces’ Carmen Machi) is a Madrid housewife who runs a hair removal business from home. As her taxi-driver husband Francisco (Pep Ricart) leaves for work, we watch as she attends to clients and domestic chores. Only beneath the veneer of quiet efficiency there lies a sense of disquiet, that only begins to emerge as her husband goes to bed, Rosa embarks on a night odyssey, and we are invited to follow and observe as the adventure unfolds. From Javier Rebollo, winner of the FIPRESCI award at the 2007 LFF with Lola, his debut feature, comes a new film similarly concerned with a central protagonist on the edge in a cityscape where the impersonal and the bureaucratic predominate. From an economical script (co-written with Lola Mayo), Rebollo builds up a narrative in which much remains suggested and implied. Carmen Machi, one of Spain’s most popular TV actresses, here shows a veritable change of register in capturing the anxieties and concerns beneath Rosa’s veneer of calm competence. The result is a disquieting film from one of Spain’s most distinctive young filmmakers. —bfiRead More »

A day in the life of Azucena, who is running out of time to keep herself and her family from being evicted; Rafael, a lawyer who sets out to reunite a mother with her daughter; and Teodora, a sick old woman who searches for her long-lost son before it is too late.Read More »

Quote:
Ten years after making his mark on Spanish cinema with The Spirit of the Beehive, Víctor Erice returned to filmmaking with this adaptation of a novella by Adelaida García Morales, which deepens the director’s fascination with childhood, fantasy, and the legacy of his country’s civil war. In the North of Spain, Estrella grows up captivated by her father, a doctor with mystical powers—and by the enigma of his youth in the South, a near-mythical region whose secrets haunt Estrella more and more as time goes on. Though Erice’s original vision also encompassed a section set in the South itself, scenes that were never shot, El Sur remains an experience of rare perfection and satisfaction, drawing on painterly cinematography by José Luis Alcaine to evoke the enchantments of memory and the inaccessible, inescapable mysteries of the past.Read More »

Merlin, Arrieta’s one feature shot on 35mm, is an adaptation of Cocteau’s play “Knights of the Round Table.”Read More »

Why are we still able to watch moving images captured over 125 years ago?

As we move ever further into the digital age, our audiovisual heritage seems to be taken increasingly for granted. However, much of our filmed history and cinema has already been lost forever.

Film archivists, curators, technicians and filmmakers from around the world explain what film preservation is and why it is needed. Our narrators are custodians of film whose work behind the scenes safeguards the survival of motion pictures. It is a task they undertake based on their closely held belief in the artistic and cultural value of the moving image, in tune with a shared mantra that a film might one day transform someone’s life. This documentary pays homage to them all and sheds some light on their critical undertaking.Read More »