Spain

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In a role reversal that is challenging for any young adult, Ali has become a caretaker to her mother’s delicate mental health. While her mother’s mood alternates between boyfriend-induced happiness to solitary depression, Ali is left to rebelliously carve her own place in the world. Scarred by the past, she chainsmokes, refuses to learn to drive, and is terrified of falling in love. Ali spends her days working in a supermarket and the rest of her time off on misadventures with her friend. But when she meets Julio, her tough veneer starts to crack and she may have to amend her strict rules of non-engagement. Nadia de Santiago gives a star-making performance as Ali, a multi-layered young woman who has been forced to grow up too quick yet is holding on desperately to her youth. The world that writer-director Paco R. Baños has designed for her is delightfully quirky, giving her a true sense of charisma that affords her buoyancy to float above her challenging situation. Baños’ debut feature is an assured debut that breathes life into the coming-of-age genre, stylistically painting in lush primary colors but finding the more complicated colors mixing beneath the surface. Read More »

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A technical failure has endangered the lives of the people on board Peninsula Flight 2549. The pilots are striving, along with their colleagues in the Control Center, to find a solution. The flight attendants and the chief steward are atypical, baroque characters who, in the face of danger, try to forget their own personal problems and devote themselves body and soul to the task of making the flight as enjoyable as possible for the passengers, while they wait for a solution. Life in the clouds is as complicated as it is at ground level, and for the same reasons, which could be summarized in two: sex and death.Read More »

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Blancanieves is a 2012 black-and-white silent Spanish drama film directed by Pablo Berger. Based on the fairy tale “Snow White” by the Brothers Grimm, the story is set in a romantic vision of 1920s Andalusia. The film is intended to be an homage to 1920s European silent films. Spain’s submission for the 2012 Foreign Language Oscar, but it didn’t make the shortlist.Read More »

Based on a historical novel by Antonio Larreta, Volaverunt imagines a number of romantic misadventures that enlivened the court of King Carlos IV, a Spanish ruler of the early 19th century. As the story opens, the beautiful Duchess of Alba (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) is sharing a coach passing through Andalusia with artist Francisco de Goya (Jorge Perugorria), Prime Minister Manuel de Godey (Jordi Molla), and Pepita Tudo (Penelope Cruz), a peasant girl. Goya and de Godey are obviously charmed by the Duchess’s exotic beauty and free-spirited attitude, but the Prime Minister is equally smitten with Pepita. The Prime Minister invites her to the royal court in Madrid, where she becomes his mistress and the subject of several of Goya’s paintings. However, Queen Maria Luisa (Stefania Sandrelli) disapproves of de Godey’s new love, and instead arranges for him to marry the Countess de Chinchon (Maria Alonso), a plain-Jane member of low-level royalty. The Duchess is upset with de Godey’s marriage, as it keeps her away from a collection of royal jewelry she covets. When the Duchess suddenly and mysteriously dies, Goya, de Godey, and Pepita are all murder suspects and must confess where they were and what they were doing at the moments leading up to her death. While the film itself received mixed notices, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon received the Silver Shell as Best Actress at the 1999 San Sebastian Film Festival. The version screened at San Sebastian and several other festivals in the fall of 1999 was director Bigas Luna’s original cut; the film’s producers announced that the film would be re-edited for international release. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie GuideRead More »

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This suspense thriller about a bad relationship concerns Lola (Angela Molina), who is working hard for a living but becomes caught up in a sado-masochistic affair with the vicious Mario (Feodor Atkine). Finally breaking away from her own neurosis and a punishing lifestyle, Lola meets and marries Robert (Patrick Bauchau) and starts a new life with him in Barcelona. They have a young daughter but after a few years, Mario suddenly bursts into their lives claiming that the daughter is really his. Nothing but trouble lies ahead. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, RoviRead More »

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A film within a film. Two teenage girls watching a horror film about a killer controlled by his mother are disturbed by the excessive violence. As they, and the rest of the audience, leave the theater, characters, etc. from the film they were watching confront them.Read More »

“Red Lips” are two female detectives trying to find missing models and dancers. A pop artist called Klaus Thriller and his werewolf-like assistant, Morpho, are the main suspects for the murderers.

‘Sadisterotica’ (fantastic title!) isn’t really your typical Jess Franco movie. Released in the same year as his classic ‘Succubus’, it doesn’t consist of his usual blend of eroticism and horror, it is instead a campy detective comedy/thriller in the vein of ‘Modesty Blaise’ or Mario Bava’s ‘Diabolik’. Fans of Matt Helm and Austin Powers will dig it.Read More »

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A young girl hospitalized with a coma manages to have a relationship with an enigmatic girl

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Asia, an 18 year-old girl, is in the hospital in comatose state. Her mother and her boyfriend, Nathaniel, take care of her. Little by little we’ll see the events that led Asia to the hospital, the relationship with her mother, her girlfriends and her boyfriend, and specially with Eloïse, an enigmatic girl who introduce her in a new world of feelings. With her, Asia will revive a painful episode from her past, a one her mother will not allow to see the light. Finally, Asia will face everybody to be happy in her relationship with Eloïse.Read More »

Synopsis
It’s summer and a young foreigner saunters through the streets of this city of street cars and canals.
A lone wanderer, the hypotheses surrounding him will be changing: An artist, at leisure, a simple tourist, a parasite, paranoid, in love…?
Lodged at an old, family-run hotel, he walks through the city, observing, writing and drawing –sketching gestures and expressions caught at random on the street.
In the evenings he haunts a night club called “Les Aviateurs”.
He peers through the open windows of certain façades.
He revisits one of them at different times of day, here and there making out minor domestic contents, more insinuated than seen.
A certain mystery floats over the nature of his intentions, with attitudes reminiscent of those of a voyeur or even a psycho-killer…Read More »