Spanish

A baby is left at the gates of a monastery. The monks attempt to find a home for it, but end up deciding to raise the boy themselves. However, in the process, they end up offending a high-ranking official in the local town, who resolves to have the monks evicted. Several years later, the boy inadvertently causes chaos at the town fair, and the official (now the mayor) uses the event to force the eviction. With only a month left in their home, the monks need a miracle. And it is then the boy discovers a crucifix in an upstairs room in the monastery…Read More »

Synopsis:
In this bizarre psychological thriller, a handsome young boy (John Mouder-Brown), who is marred by a strange birthmark on his face, tells a disturbing tale about how his family died. The family had been living for some time in a villa which was overgrown with flowering vines. Some of the vines even penetrate to the inside of the house. It seems that the boy’s father, (Fernando Rey), was part of a conspiracy to kill Hitler, and when the plot failed, he was forced to kill his family in order to prevent them from suffering horrible torture. Unable for some reason to kill himself, he escaped but became the victim of amnesia after a motorcycle accident. When a German governess came to stay, his father’s memory is revived. The boy travels to Germany in pursuit of the governess and learns that her family seeks vengeance from his father.Read More »

Tasio (1984)

Wonderful, simple story of a young lad growing up in his rural surroundings, more or less in the line of `El Sur’, Erice’s little masterpiece produced just two years earlier. Armendáriz achieves an intense and intimate portrait of Tasio and the people around him without any over-dramatization, using simple but effective dialogue, careful characterization, and of course the brilliant photography. Tasio learns to eke out a living making coal, really charcoal-making for domestic use. Wood is piled up into a great heap, maybe three or four metres high and up to eight metres diameter, and set alight in the inside so that it burns very slowly. The `carbonero’ – Tasio – must attend this smouldering heap by climbing up on it and poking and prodding holes deep into it so that there is a minimum of ventilation. You can still find some examples of this old craft in rural parts of Spain even today.Read More »

Los ilusos (2013)

The Wishful Thinkers, Jonas Trueba’s virtually home-made follow-up to the altogether less interesting Every Song Talks about Me, is a black and white celebration of open-handed film making as well as of those old chestnuts: art and life. This black and white portrayal of a group of young Spaniards who share an innocent, unconditional love of film has become something of a cult item amongst film literati in Spain with an inevitably lengthy run of festival screenings likely to extend its appeal to those in the know.Read More »

Las ranas (2020) A woman visits her boyfriend, locked up in a prison a few hours’ drive away from Buenos Aires. Each week, she manages as best as she can to accomplish her mission: provide her boyfriend food, drugs and love. In an exercise of visceral realism, Edgardo Castro constructs a harrowing love story with Las Ranas.Read More »

In a Chilean little town, the son of an uprooted couple, formed by a rigorous communist father and a loving but weak mother, tries to pave his own path in a society that does not understand their Jewish-Ukrainian origins.Read More »

Quote:
Short film in black and white directed by legendary Iván Zulueta as practice for the second year of the Official School of Cinema (Escuela Oficial de Cine). Despite not appearing in the credits, the story is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Oval Portrait”. Shot in 35mm.

This is Zulueta’s first professional film job (previously, with just 20 years old, he had filmed La fortuna de los Irureta in super 8 as an amateur).Read More »

Quote:
Las Malas Intenciones tells the story of a period in the life of Cayetana, an eight-year-old girl growing up in Peru in the early 80’s, when terrorist violence was starting to agitate the country. The story unfolds from the point of view of this intelligent child, but with a somewhat dark and distorted personality. Daughter of separated parents, Cayetana spends most of the time on her own and under the care of their employees. After returning from a long trip, the mother, Agnes, gives her some unexpected news: she is pregnant. With this news Cayetana’s fragile world collapses. She locks herself in her room and solemnly declares that the day of birth of her brother will be the day of her own death. Only her imagination and the emergence of the national heroes of their textbooks – Olaya, Grau, Bolognesi – may save her from an increasingly alienated family environment in a country about to collapse.Read More »

The life of Pedro Manrique Figueroa, a pioneer of collage in Colombia, is like an adventure novel that is both incomplete and contradictory. Taking his life and work as a pretext, this mockumentary takes the viewer on a journey through history from the year 1934 up until 1981, when the artist mysteriously disappeared from view. Un tigre de papel is itself a collage, where art and politics rub shoulders, and where truth and lies are placed side by side.Read More »