Top Picks
Spanish Affair 2 (Opening Night)
Returning from months at sea, Koldo is met by his beloved Merche, who is less than impressed with him after his long absence. With her head held high, she storms away in a huff leaving him with an envelope announcing a seemingly joyful occasion – Amaia is getting married! But the fiercely Basque Koldo is horrified to realise Rafa is not the groom…even worse, she is marrying a CATALAN! With less than a few days to go before the wedding, Koldo and Rafa must join forces to prevent Amaia from promising herself to Pau, the wealthy hipster. What is not clear to Koldo, is why Rafa and Amaia separated in the first place…
Antonio, a onetime construction foreman who fell off the grid decades ago, is now a night watchman living in a junkyard. Well, not any more: business is bad, and the scrapyard’s owner just replaced him with a guard dog. Jobs are scarce in this corner of rural Mexico, and Antonio has to settle for pumping gas for pittance; but when an old co-worker stops by for a fill-up, Antonio once again gets the chance to lead a team. Setting out with four novices and a rolling spray-paint machine, the men start the job of laying down a dashed yellow line on a 217-kilometer stretch between two small towns. While on the road, a spectrum of hardships and triumphs will force the unlikely team of misfits to unexpectedly bond.
It´s Christmas time in Barcelona and the city is brimming with magic and love. Carles and Laura have just had their first baby and they’re quickly discovering that three really is a crowd. Meanwhile, Grandma Carmen has some news, and decides that Christmas is the right occasion to tell her family about her new relationship. Adrián and Angel are roommates who share everything, but sharing a girl might prove a little more complicated than they expected. All the while, desperate romantic Oscar has set himself a goal: to have a one night stand without falling head over heels in love; and for Jaume, this night has something special in store, as an unexpected encounter with a mysterious young French woman will bring love back into his life after almost 50 years.
June, a woman who left her home in Madrid to escape a terrible occurrence, has now returned; but not as the same person she once was. Wiser and more confident, she yearns to reconnect with her father, brother, best friend and ex-lover Diego. However, her past abrupt departure makes this much more difficult than she anticipated and she must gradually work to regain their love and trust. Her greatest challenge is Diego, who has also changed during her time away. He has become a recluse and retreated into a self-imposed solitary confinement in his apartment where he avoids human contact and natural light. June is determined to save him from disappearing completely. Slowly her presence draws him back into the world as she fights for them to reconcile their differences and realise their old dream of moving to Berlin together.
Barça Dreams (Special Event)
Barça Dreams details the amazing history of one of the most popular and admired football clubs on Earth, FC Barcelona. Its mites and legends include arguably the world’s best player of all time Lionel Messi, the famous coach Pep Guardiola and the man that revolutionized this sport with his innovative vision, Johan Cruyff.
This emotional journey begins with the club’s founder Joan Gamper, 115 years ago, and follows the dreams and ambitions of a long list of football celebrities. We see the success reached by Messi, Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta, all of them born to play football at the extraordinary school of La Masia. Moreover, this documentary unveils the secrets of a powerful sports club linked not only to the world fans but also to the Catalan identity, as it was formed alongside political movements and events, validating its unique legend “Barça: more than a club”.
When theatre actor Julián receives an unexpected visit from his childhood friend Tomás, the encounter is bittersweet. This reunion is their first meeting in many years, triggered by Julián’s diagnosis with a serious illness. Tomás is baffled by his friend’s decision to forgo continued treatment and instead focus on putting his affairs in order: distributing possessions, reconciling past disputes, and, most importantly, finding a home for his beloved Staffordshire terrier, Truman. It’s this task that is causing Julián the greatest concern. Over four days, as the two men walk the streets of Madrid visiting bookshops, restaurants, doctors, and veterinarians, they examine their lives, speculating on what the future holds.
A Spanish couple travel to Eastern Europe with bright hopes of adopting a child. However, things do not work out as they had expected. The dream they came with threatens to turn into a nightmare as their case is dealt with by dishonest pencil pushers in a strange country and they wait to be assigned a healthy (or not so healthy) child. Finding themselves faced with growing hostility, their own latent conflicts come to the fore.
Rocío is a young single mother who has been without work for three and a half years in the Andalucian town of Jerez de la Frontera. She is on the edge of a precipice, living day-to-day off the small allowance of odd jobs and the generosity of her neighbours. As she fights to keep her apartment (with several months of rental debt accrued) she struggles to provide for her eight-year-old son Adrián. When Rocío’s gas canister runs out or when her water is turned off, she is faced with an impossible decision: if she replaces them, there is no money to feed her son.
Paulina, the daughter of a well-to-do judge who (despite the protestations of the men closest to her) makes the decision to abandon her Ph.D. and promising law career in order to teach politics in a pioneering education program in the rural slums. The job takes her to the border joining Argentina to Paraguay and Brazil, a marginalized area whose forests have been violated by the lumber industry.
One night, still struggling to overcome the indifference of her students toward lessons on the principals of democracy, Paulina is mistaken as the cheating girlfriend of a local man, and brutally attacked. In the aftermath, Paulina again defies the pleas of her father and boyfriend, and rather than return home, she endeavours to confront the guilty parties.
The Clan charts the horrific true story of the comfortably middle-class Puccio family, whose business, in the early 1980s, consisted of kidnapping people even richer than themselves. The hauntingly cold-eyed Guillermo Francella plays Arquímedes who, along with his family as accomplices, regularly actioned the unthinkable to his victims. He even had the support of his politician friends, despite the fall of Jorge Rafael Videla, which officially ended the state sanctioned “disappearance” of an estimated 30,000 dissidents. However, as those closest to him begin the falter in their alliance, justice threatens to burst the perfect bubble Arquímedes has constructed around himself, in the most dramatic way possible.
Joel’s wife has passed away. He awakes one morning from lengthy sleep to discover that his wife’s dog, Elvis, is apparently close to death. With the little energy he has, Joel endeavours to take Elvis to a vet, but his journey holds many more complications than he intended, especially as he has inadvertently locked himself out of his flat. So ensues an uncertain pilgrimage around the places and people he knows in search of a spare house key, with the semi-comatose Elvis. Amongst those he encounters are his brother Pau, his friend Marti, and his neighbour Maria. Each meeting is a confrontation Joel is eager to escape, but his desperation to lock himself away again forces him to engage.
Fer is a Woody Allen-esque divorced filmmaker in the midst of a life-crisis who makes ends meet by shooting adverts. While on an impulsive trip to Menorca with an old friend, Fer takes residence in the spare room of Nuria and her daughter Olivia. Over the course of his stay, Fer will battle with an awkward crush on Nuria, while Olivia deals with the fickle nature of young summer love. When Nuria has to leave unexpectedly, Olivia and Fer explore the island and bond.
Embrace of the Serpent (Closing Night)
Embrace of the Serpent is a breathtaking cinematic odyssey through the Amazon, following the quests of two European explorers in search of a rare flower alleged to have healing properties. Inspired by the real-life journals kept by Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, the film charts each man’s treacherous and life-changing journey. Though decades apart, both are guided through the labyrinthine rivers and jungles by the same native shaman Karamakate, the last surviving member of his tribe, who takes them deeper and deeper into a heart of darkness. The spectacular widescreen black and white cinematography and evocative sound design combine to depict the landscapes and characters with an hypnotic, mythical sense of wonder. This is an extraordinary film.