Isabel Coixet
Isabel Coixet ventures into a difficult topic and time with this passionate, romantic love story located in XVIII Century Galicia. Carefully staged with an unknown cast, this third film by the director of Things I Never Told You shows a remarkable capacity to go against the flow.
VENTURA PONS
A gay literature teacher is ill and decides to leave a diskette containing his last book for his favourite pupil to inherit. His story intertwines with that of his best friend's wife and daughter. Lots of things are going to change for all these characters, lost in an empty summertime Barcelona in a one-day span.
Santiago Aguilar (La Cuadrilla), Luís Guridi (La Cuadrilla)
The latest installment in the trilogy dedicated by La Cuadrilla to deepest Spain, or "Spain through the back door". After a righteous retirement and rigurous arbitration, it's the turn of a man with absolutely no scruples to play at politics. Manuel Manquiña embodies the leading role in a film every bit as populated as the other two.
JOSE LUIS GARCI
With this film, thoroughly adapted from Benito Pérez Galdós's novel, Garci completes his trilogy based on Spanish novels, Canción de cuna and La herida luminosa being the other two. Fernando Fernán Gómez portrays an old impoverished aristocrat who knows that one of his two grand-daughters is a bastard and debates on which of the two might be the one. Cayetana Guillén Cuervo is his daughter-in-law, and Rafael Alonso, in his last role before his death, does the granfather's old friend.
JUAN BAUTISTA STAGNARO
On the outskirts of a provincial town, Pájaro is determined to enter the Guinness Book by breaking the longest bike ride record. He gets on his bike and rides round the fountain in the square with the help of his friend Lopecito. This is the story of a man willing to face life's challenges. This race will open for him the path to love and it may redeem him...
GUSTAVO CORRADO
Days of outcasts: a man is kicked out of his home with his only possession, a wardrobe. Since he doesn't know what to do nor where to go to for support, he decides to get into the wardrobe and let himself die. A girl who lives nearby takes pity on him and stays by his side. But there's no hope for either of them...
ARTURO RIPSTEIN
Mexico - France - Spain
120 min.
Adapted to cinema by Paz-Alicia García Diego, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, one of the most famous books by Nobel Prizewinner Gabriel García Márquez, is one of Arturo Ripstein's most personal films. The Mexican director has not simply translated the text into images, but has transformed the work until making it his own. Marisa Paredes and the Mexican actor Fernando Luján hold a top order acting duel.
RICARDO LARRAÍN
Chile - Spain - France
110 min.
It's 1980 in Chile. Guillermo, Fernando and Isabel make up their own utopian Independent Republic in the desert. Ten years later, however, things are quite different: The old friendship has changed, Fernando and Isabel have a son, the utopia is over. Carmen Maura and Maribel Verdú are part of the cast in this film by the director of La frontera.
JAVIER FESSER
One of the most amusing recent films in Spanish cinema. Fesser, together with his brother Guillermo, broadens the world of fiction created in his previous prize-winning short movies and comes up with this delirious story with Luis Ciges at the centre and martians of all sorts of colours all around. It's an ironical comedy about the wish to be a father or a mother. One of the most surrealistic and subversive films of late.
MARIO GAS
One of Spain's most prestigious theatre directors makes his debut in cinema with this film, adapted from Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's novel. It takes a glance at Spanish history in the last fifty years. Acted by Jordi Mollà, Pere Ponce, Paulina Gálvez and veterans Serge Reggiani and Laurent Terzieff.
IMANOL URIBE
This unusual film, not easy to classify, means a radical change of style in Uribe's career. The plot itself could be considered as cinema noir: A detective, hired by a husband who suspects he's being deceived, investigates a woman. However, there's much more to it. It's like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces are not at all what they appear to be. Several stories intermingle: some of them are told, others are suggested, others are unreal. The film is a worthy oddity.
XAVIER VILLAVERDE
Two brothers, born on the Costa de la Muerte in Galicia, the "finis terrae", set off in search of their father, who deserted them when they were children. This voyage to the bottom of their feelings will tie bonds between them for good. Acted by Nancho Novo, Elena Anaya and Enrique Alcides making his debut.
ANTONIO MERCERO
It's the story of a young curator at the Prado Museum during the Spanish Civil War. He saves a self portrait by Goya from disaster and lives with it throughout the whole war. The family who live with the young man, the girl he finds in the rubble of a bombardment, and the people living in republican Madrid surrounded by Franco's troops, provide the ingredients for a bitter-sweet comedy where Mercero captures the spirit of little things.
MANUEL PALACIOS
Gálvez and Laura Ponte.
RICARDO FRANCO, FERNANDO BAULUZ
Ricardo Franco's posthumous work, completed by his friend Fernando Bauluz, Lágrimas negras tells a tragic love story. Andres's life is completely shaken after he meets Isabel, a woman who is not really mad but simply different. Isabel suffers and Andres is willing to give up everything and follow her wherever. Ariadna Gil plays Isabel's character with power and feeling, letting through the team's pain as filming was carried on after the director's death.
MARIA RIPOLL
Spain - France - UK - Germany - USA
90 min.
Maria Ripoll shot her first film in London. It's a romantic comedy about a second opportunity. Great acting by three great stars, among them Penélope Cruz with her lovely accent in English.
JOSE LUIS VALENZUELA
A good example of the new Chicano movies currently produced in Los Angeles. It's the story of four young, intelligent professional women who meet in a nightclub, called Luminarias, to chat and exchange gossip about men. Directed by the Art Director of The Contemporary Latin Theater.
NICOLAS SAAD, MARIANO DE ROSA, SALVADOR ROSELLI, RODRIGO MORENO
After the excellent experience of Moebius, the Buenos Aires Cinema University produced this second regular feature, directed by students. Four stories intertwine in a one day span, four down- to-earth simple stories which expose the evils of the world we live in.
Dolores Payás
Dolors Payás tells the story of a forty-year-old woman who, far from being finished, has the right to give her life a new turn. It's told with firm solidarity, fluently written and most remarkable of all, shot with elegance and sensitive cinematography. Elvira Mínguez is splendid as the literature teacher who tries to find some sense in life.
MANSUR MADAVI
In a small village in the desert in Chile the local school is the place where a little boy, Lorenzo Montalbán, meets the world; a world captured much better with eyes closed. A curious film, shot in Chile and directed by Mansur Madavi, a director originally from Azerbaijan who is now settled in Vienna.
ALEX DE LA IGLESIA
The history of Spain in the last twenty years is seen through the love-hate relationship between two bluff comedians shot to glory and fame by T.V., where they'll act their last performance. This is Alex de la Iglesia's fourth film and unsurprisingly as corrosive as his curious book ?Payasos en la lavadora?.
SEBASTIAN CORDERO
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MARTIN REJTMAN
On her 27th birthday, Silvia Prieto decides to change her life. She starts working in a cafe, gives up smoking dope, and buys a canary. She meets an Italian tourist who tells her of another woman with the same name, Silvia Prieto, and that makes her whole world tumble. A second regular feature by one of Argentina's new directors.
BENITO ZAMBRANO
This year's surprise, the sleeper of Spanish cinema. Here we discover a new director, new actresses and actors and a city, in a true everyday story. Loneliness, friendship, affection and the family one manages to make oneself: this is what this remarkably interesting opera prima is about. It all takes place in an earthy Seville.