Part elegy on the dying of a rural village, part exposition on mortality and obsolescence, and part exaltation of quotidian grace, Mercedes Álvarez’s El Cielo gira (The Turning Sky) is a serene, contemplative, and indelible rumination on the permanence of landscape, the transitory nature of existence, the imprint of history, and the eternal cycle of […]
A harried woman seemingly on the verge of an emotional breakdown wakes her son, hurriedly packs their belongings and steals away in the middle of the night, arriving at the door of her sister Ana (Candela Peña) still unwittingly dressed in her house slippers. Pilar (Laia Marull) has finally decided to leave her abusive husband […]
Part whimsical fable and part affectionate human comedy, José Luis Cuerda’s The Education of Fairies is a slight and effervescent, but charming and thoughtful demythification of a “happily ever after” romantic ideal. The opening transition from a graphically illustrated title sequence to a live action shot of a father recounting a bedtime story on the […]
Evoking the films of Carlos Saura in its allegorical portraits of culturally entrenched social and psychological landscapes (most notably, in The Hunt) coupled with Luis Buñuel’s wry excoriation of the bourgeoisie, Mario Camus’ The Holy Innocents presents a caustic and potent indictment of the inhumanity (and corruption) of privilege, class stratification, and marginalization. Adapted from […]
In the autumn of 1990, renowned Spanish artist Antonio Lopez Garcia enters his Madrid studio and begins to assemble a large canvas for his new painting. The subject of his still life is a fruit laden quince tree in the courtyard. Lopez proves to be a meticulous craftsman. He drives three long poles into the […]
A pensive adolescent named Estrella (Icíar Bollaín) awakens at dawn to the alarming sound of barking dogs that progresses to an increasingly audible, anxious commotion downstairs as Estrella’s panicked mother, Julia (Lola Cardona) calls in vain for her husband Agustín (Omero Antonutti) and, upon discovering that he had mysteriously disappeared sometime during the night, awakens […]