Spanish

A woman uncovers some unsettling truths about her country and its history in this drama from Spain. Lola (Ariadna Gil) is a writer who feels creatively stifled and hasn’t been able to work out a new idea in months. Looking for something to clear her creative block, She takes an assignment to write a piece about Rafael Sanchez Mazas (Ramon Fontsere), a writer who sided with the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. While legend has it Mazas was killed by Republican troops, the truth is he was given protection and shelter by Friends of the Forest, a group of men who lived in the woods. As Lola tries to search out Joaquim Figueras, one of the last surviving Friends of the Forest, she discovers a soldier who captured Mazas and was prepared to shoot him, but opted to let him go at the last moment. As Lola’s writer’s block dissolves, she digs deeper in search of the truth about this elusive man and his mysterious actions during the war. Soldados de Salamina was based on a true story and the real-life Joaquim Figueras appears in the film, along with several other people who took part in the shelter and capture of Mazas. From AllMovieRead More »

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Not much happens in this film, which is about the disaffected lives of young people in Argentina in the early 60s. They have enough money, but they can’t get no satisfaction if you know what I mean. The strongest statement comes from Roberto, a TV producer, who complains that his bosses won’t let him do what he wants; they call him too young and rebellious. The young people in this film are all rebellious in one way or another, but mostly they are stifled by the social system. So they live somewhat dissolute and listless lives.Read More »

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A man chop down trees, organizes the trunks, clean them, stops to defecate, lunch, nap and continues to sell its timber.

Ed Gonzalez for Slant Magazine wrote:
Lisandro Alonso’s La Libertad is a penetrating peek into the daily life of a woodcutter from Argentina’s Pampa. Misael Saavedra’s stoic figure marks trees, cuts them down, shaves them, and loads them onto trucks. In between, he finds time to sleep, eat, and defecate. The film brings to mind the humility and minimalism of Iranian cinema, and though Alonso doesn’t seem to use the woodcutter as a political pawn, the film’s long takes and the cyclical, labored nature of the man’s daily grind force the spectator to question the nature of freedom.Read More »

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Los rubios focuses on the directors search for her dissappeared parents. Is it possible to get to the truth or they are only fictions, imaginary characters from everyone who rememebers them?Read More »

One New Year’s holiday, Rodrigo (30) and Mariana (20) drive to the remote south Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Arriving late at night, they find Karina (7), who tells them she ran away from home because her uncle touches her. They decide to stay the night and try to find help in the morning. But by dawn, the girl is gone.
The couple check into a hotel, and Mariana can’t stop wondering what happened to the girl. Rodrigo is away most of the day. She can’t do anything but wait, and in her loneliness, she becomes more and more restless and distressed. Karina goes back to her parents’ campsite on the beach, one amongst the dozens of families on holiday that have invaded the otherwise completely wild national park. Her mother grounds her for running away, and for the first time in her life, her father fails to defend her.Read More »

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Sending shock waves through the Mexican film industry and the world, this blistering feature debut from Alejandro G. Iñárritu brought the director’s electrifying visual style and bravura multistrand storytelling to the screen with the heart-stopping impact of a primal scream. In Mexico City, the lives of three strangers—a young man mixed up in the gritty underworld of dogfighting, a glamorous woman who seems to have it all, and a mysterious assassin who is desperate to reconnect with his estranged daughter—collide in a tragic twist of fate that forever alters their personal journeys. A tour de force of violence and emotion captured in a rush of kinetic handheld camera work, Amores perros is an unforgettable plunge into a world of brutality and aching, interconnected humanity.Read More »

This sophisticated Spanish romantic comedy charts the course of a long-time on-again-off again love affair between Diana Balaguer and Santi Garcia. The story begins at a sumptuous dinner party for the King of Spain. There the beauteous Diana Balaguer makes eye contact with security guard Santi Garcia, and suddenly faints dead away. The story fades from 1996 to 1966, and the film switches from color to black-and-white. Diana is a teenager with a terrible crush on Beatle John Lennon. She sneaks into his room and hides under the bed when Lennon arrives with a groupie. Diana is shocked to find herself hiding beside the handsome Santi. As Lennon and the groupie begin making out, so do the youngsters beneath them. Thus begins their sporadic affair. Over its course, Diana reveals her ambitions to become a society hostess. Unfortunately, Santi simply wants to settle down, get married and raise children. Their differences cause the lovers to drift apart. By the time the film returns to the present tense, both lovers have undergone major changes. From All MovieRead More »

After the end of the military dictatorship in Argentina in 1983, Floreal is released from prison. Instead of returning to his wife, he wanders through the night of Buenos Aires. He meets some people from his past–most of which are only imaginary–and remembers the events of his imprisonment.Read More »

Selva (13) lives in a coastal town in the Caribbean. After the sudden disappearance of her only motherly figure, she is left to take care of her grandfather who doesn’t want to live. Between shadows and wild games, she must decide if she will help her grandfather die, even though that means going through her last moments of childhood alone.

1 win & 10 nominations.Read More »