Icíar Bollaín
Carlos Boyero is one of Spanish cinema's most followed and feared figures. Controversy has hounded him since he published his first article more than forty years ago, and he has remained in the eye of the hurricane ever since. Is he the last representative of a disappearing time? Has social media put an end to the traditional influence of the critics. Taking the background and personality of this very controversial figure as its basis, El crítico / The Critic will also endeavour to reflect on the enormous changes taking place in Spain in the field of film criticism.
Rosa is about to turn 45 and realises that she's always lived her life to serve everyone else. So she decides to leave it all behind and take charge of her life and fulfil her dream of starting her own business
Yuli is the nickname given to Carlos Acosta by his father, Pedro, who considers him the son of Ogun, an African god and a fighter. As a child Yuli avoids discipline and education, learning from the streets of an impoverished and abandoned Havana. His father, however, has other ideas, and knowing that his son has a natural talent for dance, sends him to the National Ballet School of Cuba. Despite his repeated escapes and initial poor behaviour, the boy is inevitably drawn to the world of dance, and begins to shape his legendary career from a young age, becoming the first black dancer to be cast in some of the most prestigious ballet roles, originally written for white dancers, in companies such as the Houston Ballet or the Royal Ballet in London.
Alma’s family has been producing quality olive oil in the Baix Maestrat area of Spain’s Castellón for generations. Yet changing pressures in the industry have made their traditional practices economically untenable, and the family is now in the mass-production poultry business. Alma’s grandfather has not spoken in years. Sadness envelopes him, and he no longer wants to eat. His sons—Alma’s father and uncle—are impatient with him, but Alma understands her grandfather. She realizes he has been grieving for a thousand-year-old olive tree that the family has uprooted and sold to pay some debts. (A sadly common reality in Castellón at present.) Unable to bear the idea that her grandfather could die without seeing this terrible wrong corrected, Alma undertakes a quixotic mission to locate the tree and return it to the family orchard, so that her grandfather may have peace in his final days.
A documentary about the life of young Spanish immigrants in Edinburgh, Scotland, who had to leave Spain due to recession and unemployment.
Lorenzo del Escorial (Madrid), where normally, protection and improvement are much more than words. A tale of fears and anxieties, dreams and illusions, games and entertainment, full of nostalgia and the harshness of a reality that was not always happy. Accompany a child grow is a difficult, almost impossible when you have to help you recover and find their way. Aldeas Infantiles SOS does it every day. For an adult, you must first be a child.
Kathmandu, Nepal, early 1990s. Laia, a young teacher from Catalonia, Spain, works at a local school in the slums of the city where poverty reigns. Her personal path, besieged by a harsh sum of indescribable social conditions, will be a struggle against a nefarious educational system, but a journey of self-discovery as well.
As a director and his crew shoot a controversial film about Christopher Columbus in Cochabamba, Bolivia, local people rise up against plans to privatize the water supply.
Private detectives Inés, Eva, and Carmen often invade others' privacy but are clueless about confronting their own secrets. While on the job, these three surveillance specialists will have to cross the thin line dividing public and private matters, bringing their own issues to light in order to solve more than just their professional cases.
The Night of the brother ("La Noche del Hermano") is a chiaroscuro tale in which the characters' not always explicit feelings cover the gamut from darkness to light through the thin line between love and fear. Because the events of life are often less astonishing than the way they are shown to us.
A multi-part feature on the governing body of Spain, the Popular Party under Jose María Aznar. Themes include the bombing of Iraq, immigration, U.S. fire in Baghdad, and the manipulation of the media.
One winter night, Pilar runs away from home. With her, she takes only a few belongings and her son, Juan. Antonio soon sets out to look for her. He says Pilar is his sunshine, and what's more, "She gave him her eyes"...
An inexplicable crack in the Pyrenees Mountains provokes excitement and scientific curiosity. As the geological fracture deepens and widens, the European community begins to disassociate itself from the calamity, and panic ensues among tourists and residents attempting to escape. When Spain and Portugal physically separate from the continent, the detached Iberian peninsula aimlessly floats off to sea, becoming home to a group of god-like humans.
After living in Madrid for many years as a teacher, Lucia returns to her hometown after her father's death results in the inheritance of his tomato farm. While fighting the community's racism toward the new illegal workers, Lucia falls in love with the farm's accountant, Curro, a man who shares her cause. The couple is forced to confront the racism of the town and as tensions come to head, they will have to make some decisions that could cost them everything.
Norberto Lopez Amado's They're Watching Us is about a cop who becomes obsessed with a case. Juan (Carmelo Gomez) is ordered to head up an investigation concerning a businessman who has been missing for almost three years. The officer who worled on the case previously now resides in a mental institution and is unable to say anything other than, "They're watching us." A priest (Roberto Alvarez) explains how a series of disappearances in the area have supernatural underpinnings. As Juan is absorbed deeper and deeper into the case, his mother is concerned for him.
The two million Spanish women who are victims of domestic violence and the death each week of a woman at the hands of her partner is not fiction but pure reality.
Patricia, a woman from Dominican Republic, needs a home and an economic security that her illegal status in Madrid does not provide her. Milady, twenty, born in Havana and dying to travel the world. Marirosi has a job, a home, and the most complete solitude... just like Alfonso, Damián and Carmelo, men from the St. Eulalia, a village lacking both marrying women and future. A bachelors' party forces the encounter between them and the beginning of this bittersweet story of sharing a living.
Unbenownst to a middle-aged teacher of handicapped children, his long-term suffering girlfriend is pregnant with his child. The film philosophically explores the ideas of free will and destiny as they relate to the characters and their life choices.
Nina is a 20 years old girl from Valladolid who lives with her divorced father, an autoritarian and conservative man. Trini is of the same age and has lost her mother. For both Valladolid and their families have nothing to offer and therefore they go on a risky voyage to the Costa del Sol at the south of Spain.
David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.
Carlos is 50 years old. It has a cake with candles and seven friends to celebrate him. The police have one dead and seven suspected murder. All they have reasons to kill Carlos, and they all are... friends of the deceased.
Andres de Granada, a forty-benefit trade more clear, believed that the first months of 1993 are the best time to do business. It also has the help of his nephew Fulgencio, who has arrived in Madrid with the idea of learning the trade.
Having just split up with their respective partners, Maria and Daniel meet in a shop where they argue over a bed. From then on, they keep running into each other in all sorts of strange places and in all sorts of circumstances. They are mutually attracted and begin to intrepret the coincidences of their meeting as sign of fate, but they are hesitant to take the plunge. This little game of love and fate becomes even more complicated when Pierre, a French teacher, and Alicia, Maria's friend, become involved..Who will seduce whom?...Who will be seduced by whom?...After a series of misunderstandings, love settles the question.
An intrigue based on a failed relationship with touches of dreams and magic filmed on the streets of Seville.
Marisa, a 38 years old woman, tells a stranges story to her daughter while they're walking through a level crossing in Madrid. An anthropologist, Jaime, is chased by a mysterious jeep. In the course of the chase, he takes shelter in a small motel. When he settles down, he keeps writing in his personal diary, reflecting his impressions about his work in it.
