Eusebio Poncela
For three and a half centuries, from the same day that Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) applied his last brushstroke to the canvas, the enigma of “Las meninas, o La familia de Felipe IV” (1656) has not been deciphered. The secret story of a painting unveiled as if it was the resolution of a perfect crime.
The 70th anniversary of the “Fotogramas” magazine comes in the shape of a sentimental voyage through the history of Spanish cinema thanks to a mosaic of voices represented by people who make films, those who write them and those who consume them. The documentary pays tribute to the readers of “Fotogramas” helped by the leading figures of Spanish cinema, who will read to the camera the most representative letters received at its offices in the history of the magazine.
In a Spain consumed by ambition and power, the future of an empire depends of the mind state of a single woman.
As the life of Charles of Habsburg is told since his arrival to Spain, it can be seen how the heir to the crowns of Germany, Burgundy, the Netherlands, the Free County, Artois, Nevers and Rethel, of the territories of the Crown of Aragon and its related Italian territories, and of the territories of the Catholic Monarchs in Castile, North Africa and the Americas, matures as a statesman and gets stronger in face of menaces around him and good and bad advice from his counselors.
On a stormy day, Nat a Parisian woman, arrives by boat in Ibiza; invited by her childhood friend Sandra. Very quickly, she'll find herself in the middle of a group of initiated, within which, the suicidal master intends to lead them towards an apocalyptic end. But Nat, Sandra and their friends will take matters into their own hands in order to save Ibiza...
A group of friends discover an ancient book, the Necronomicon, the Book of the Deads. They discover that the book is a link between our world and the world of ancients creatures, older than our civilizations.
Luisa Llorente, an expert on taxation of old buildings, had recently gone to the Victorian mansion Valdemar to conduct an inventory of property ownership. After she mysteriously disappeared, Maximilian, president of her company, engaged the services of a private detective to help find her. But soon they will discover that it is not the first disappearance at Valdemar mansion!
In the 16th century, the daughter of a Spanish nobleman joins a convent and becomes a spiritual leader.
Friends get together in a country house and reminisce about the "good old times." Some now have grown-up children who accompany them and life is different... or is it? The story unravels quite well with good dialog and superior acting from the entire cast. The movie is philosophical without being bogged down by the some times heavy content. A very refreshing look at life, getting old, being free and always finding ways to share, appreciate and enjoy.
The life and tragical death of the young Spanish poet Miguel Hernández.
Stop-motion animation featuring Ken and Barbie dolls. Engaging in sexual (and some rather kinky) activities. Also some violence. The plot evolves around troubles in their marriage, due to Ken being a jerk. Will Barbie find happiness?
Julián Torralba is a former movie stuntman in Almeria, Spain. He and several of his colleagues, who once made a living in American Westerns shot in Spain, now are reduced to doing stunt shows for minuscule audiences on the decaying set built for those old Westerns. Julián wrestles with dark memories of the death of his son, also a stuntman, and with estrangement from his daughter-in-law Laura and her son Carlos. Carlos, a young boy, becomes intrigued with his late father's life and runs away to join Julián and his band of has-beens. There Carlos is initiated into the rambunctious life of these hard-drinking faux cowboys. But when Laura, a powerful executive looking for a new site for a tourist resort, learns that Carlos has joined the hated Julián, she moves to destroy even this remnant of Julián's once-proud career. Julián and the cowboys decide to fight back the only way they know how.
Students of the university of Salamanca are brutally murdered by a black masked minstrel. Alex, an architecture student who has recently moved to Salamanca discovers a pattern behind the killings; it seems as if the killer strikes regularly after the exams to free the campus from lousy students.
A woman finds herself going from having no man in her life to having more suitors than she can handle in this offbeat romantic drama. Rosa is an artist in her early forties who is recently divorced and looking for a new relationship. Unfortunately, few immediate prospects are on the horizon, and Rosa spends much of her free time commiserating with her close friend Jaime, a gay actor her own age. After consulting Andronica, a fortune teller, Rosa is told that relationships with three different men are on the horizon for her, and soon she finds herself falling for Gustavo, an architect from Argentina. While in Spain, Gustavo is staying at a hotel run by Greta, who is the unwitting center of a web of romantic entanglements; her daughter, is involved with Juan, a delivery boy for a pizza parlor who also has his eye on Rosa, while Greta's ex-husband (Bob Wilson) is also hoping to win Rosa's heart, in his case through poetry.
Grand Magician Tulan walks the arid desert paths, accompanied by his wife, Marta. On this crossing, they join the mysterious Jenifer, who travels to Chile for a sex change operation, the dwarf Tachuelita, the beautiful young Martita and, completing the troupe, two twin nuns, Ana and Maria. Although each of them has personal goals, they manage to join this "Brancaleone Army" at the end of the millennium. In this vast world, where loneliness and helplessness reign, each one looks at a different horizon. Some find it. Others do not.
An enigmatic tale of four people whose lives are intertwined by destiny are subject to the laws of fate. They discover that luck is something they cannot afford to be without as they gamble with the highest stakes possible in a deadly game from which only one of them will emerge intact.
In a dystopian society, a government uses therapy and dreams to recover, or perhaps implant, memories to those lacking them.
An emotionally distant father attempts to reconnect with the son he abandoned. After his estranged son (Juan Diego Botto) tries to commit suicide, Argentine expat Martín (Federico Luppi) brings the troubled teen live with him in Spain. But though Martín tries to reach out to his son, he's unable to bond with anyone in his life -- including his much-younger girlfriend
This film follows the exploits of a middle aged man as he wanders through Argentina. It is set in the early '80s following the end of Argentina's long military dictatorship and is based on a 1990 novel by Osvaldo Soriano. Only recently returned from European exile, with no family and friends to welcome him home, "the engineer" travels the lonely southern Pampas of Argentina on the way to a job. He is periodically joined by other strange wanderers such as Nadia, the gun slinging psychic, Lem, a strange travelling millionaire, Barante, the hobo, and Coluccini, a bankrupt circus owner who involves "the engineer" in a rigged card game..
Based on the novel "Adopted son" of Álvaro Pombo. Pancho, a seventy years old man lives isolated in a Galician country house, not far from the sea, which is served by an old maid. Suddenly, the past bursts in his life with the unexpected visit of a man who twenty years before had been his secretary. Soon after, a boy, the son of the man, moves to the house. The return of the past will have unforeseeable consequences.
The gorgeous Margot supports her aged father by seducing men on trains, slipping them a Mickey Finn (a beso de sueño) and robbing them. One night her victim is a currency smuggler taking 100 million pesetas out of Spain. He's being watched by a cop and by a burned-out alcoholic.
Jim is the drummer for the great black musician Billy Swann. With him, he plays in a club called San Sebastián, owned by his friend Floro, every summer.
Spain, under Philip IV (1621-1665). The film is based on a novel by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester. The King is stunned to see the naked body of Marfisa, the most beautiful prostitute of the town and Court. After that, he also wants to see the Queen naked. However, the King, despite the opposition and the scandal of the Church, will not stop until he reaches his wishes.
At the end of the 50s, after assassinating the legendary capo Goncalves and dividing their domains, Ventura and Otálora, rival and old friends, fight with their bands for the control of prostitution and contraband. Anabel, Ventura's favorite prostitute and her young lover, will live their passion among the violence that surrounds the port city.
When porn director Pablo reluctantly breaks up with his boyfriend, Juan, he encourages him to stay in touch. Juan moves away to live in a lighthouse and eventually writes his ex, but in the interim Pablo has taken up a psychotic new lover, Antonio. Antonio intercepts their correspondence and flies into a towering rage, terrifying Pablo but inspiring him creatively as he works on a play about his transsexual sister.
In a situation of political crisis, an immobilist group prepares to carry out a coup d'état by assassinating the president of the government, for which an American mercenary is hired.
An executive asks Carvalho to obtain photographs of his wife with her lover in order to obtain a divorce. To do so, Carvalho travels to Menorca.
Pepe Carvalho is a fictional private detective, the protagonist of a series of novels written by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán.
This adaptation of Geothe's The Sorrows of Young Werther offers a chilly and remote view of love and its passions. The setting is changed to Spain, and Werther (Eusebio Poncela) has taken a job tutoring the son of an estranged husband and wife. The boy's mother is a surgeon and therefore a rather uncommon woman for her society. She and Werther gradually become romantically involved, and his feelings for her begin to run much deeper than is apparent on the surface.
Young Serra , after a boxing match dies falling from the roof of his house. The coach of his opponent that night, and old friend of Young, hire the services of Pepe Carvalho to find the mother of the son of Young so it will not be alone .
After a period of inactivity, Crisanto, a police inspector, returns to the service. When a friend of his is murdered, he decides to take over the investigation.
In 1939, in a French prison camp, José Garcés of the defeated Spanish Republican army raises the spirits of his fellow prisoners by telling the story of the year he was 8 years old, 1911, in a small town in northeastern Spain. He was a rascal, baffling his father, always in trouble, and in love with Valentina, a neighbor girl. On his roof top at night he sends semaphore messages to her. He writes poems. He gets them into trouble, killing her father's breeding pigeons. When the two families camp at a decaying castle, his tutor, a sympathetic priest, tells him about the most valiant men, the saints, the heroes, and the poets. Already a poet, he learns a lesson about being a hero.
María, a young and attractive woman, loses her job, meets Luis, a young man with no stable job neither, his wife supports him. Luis wants to start a relationship with María, but she doesn't. She prefers to be with Luis' friends instead.
In 1973, the dictator Francisco Franco rules Spain with an iron hand, but is aging and the future of the regime is in question. Admiral Carrero Blanco is his natural successor, so the Basque terrorist organization ETA decides that he must die to prevent the continuity of the dictatorship.
A writer loses his beloved, in the hands of another man, wihtout having expressed his feelings to her.
The film plunges the intrigue of a love triangle in which is involved a former actress who has a relationship with her husband, a film producer, her lover, the screenwriter of the films he produces, and a criminal lawyer.
Tony wants to carry out a perfect robbery and get a lot of money during the celebration of the 24 Hours of Montjuic, a motorcycle race. To accomplish this, he counts with the complicity of Peter, a runner who wants to switch to professional level. Everything is carefully planned, but at the last moment a crime is committed and Peter is trapped in the house of the victim unable to get out as the gate has been locked. The only way to help Peter is that Tony gets a copy of the key that Carmen has, the girl who took care of the victim, before she returns home.
A recent widow has invited a group of family friends to her large and secluded country home. However, what the guests don't know is that the reason they've been assembled is that their host suspects one of them might be her husband's killer and she's intent on uncovering the identity of his murderer. As the guests begin to suspect each other, revealing long-kept and sinister secrets in the process, an unknown, black-gloved killer begins bumping them off in a variety of nasty ways.
A young man, Marco, working as a butcher, accidentally kills a taxi driver. His girlfriend Paula wants to go to the police so he has to kill her too. He then has to kill his brother, his brother’s fiancée and his father, who have become suspicious. He gets rid of the bodies by taking them to a slaughter house.
Daniel is a member of The Organization. He is sent on an assignment to Bilbao to determine what has become of a lad his age, a former member. He takes over the boy's room in an odd rooming house. When he is given the photo of the boy's girlfriend, he is so taken with it that he puts off his quest. The Organization requires him to continue, however, so he tracks her down to a remote fishing village.
Four part anthology horror film, with segments featuring witchcraft, ghosts, Frankenstein and his monster, and Romans battling Celtic vampires.
