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El Sur
Victor Erice is little known outside Spain despite the plaudits earned by his 1973 debut, The Spirit of the Beehive. In part this is because he has only made 3 feature-length films. El Sur was his follow-up, and arguably his masterpiece, though the finished film is only half of what he planned, the producers having…
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Official Competition
Argentine directing duo Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn brings together two of Spain’s most famous actors: Penelope Cruz (Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner for Woody Allen’s Vicki Cristina Barcelona), plays indie darling director Lola Cuevas; Pedro Almodovar’s ‘male muse’, Antonio Banderas (Cannes Best Actor winner for Pain and Glory) the film star Felix Rivero. While…
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Parallel Mothers
In keeping with Pedro Almodovar’s more recent work, notably Julieta (2016) and Pain and Glory (2019), this is a film about the weight of the past and the need for forgiveness. The story interweaves two threads: a drama of maternal confusion that could have been little better than soap opera in other hands, and an…
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Birds of Passage
The origins of the Colombian drug trade, as seen through the eyes of an indigenous family from the matrilineal Wayúu tribe, residing in the remote northern desert region of Guajira, who become involved in the booming business of selling marijuana to American youth in the 1970s. Birds of Passage embraces the Wayúu language, traditions, rituals and…
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Monos
High on a mountain in South America, eight teenage guerrillas guard a woman hostage and, almost as valuable, a milk cow called Shakira. The curious life of the regimented girls and boys is revealed against a surreal landscape of abandoned industrial buildings and panoramic views. Power plays and clashes spiral spectacularly when the teenagers are…
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Summer 1993
It’s summer and Frida (Artigas), a 6 year old orphan is bereft. Her uncle’s family take her from Barcelona to give her a fresh start in the countryside of Catalonia. Frida finds her new world hard to adjust to: unfamiliar people and places. Will she allow herself to take the risk of reconnecting as the…
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The Heiresses
It’s a shame. Chela (Brun) and Chiquita (Irun) are down on their luck, when money’s so short what can you possibly do? They both come from wealthy families, so they start to sell the possessions they’ve inherited, but it’s still not enough. Chiquita’s solution lands her in jail and Chela, alone and aloof, has to…
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Son of the Bride
This Argentinian comedy-drama has a stellar pedigree – an Oscar-winning director (Campanella won for thriller The Secret of their Eyes, also shown by WFC) and a cast of some of the most celebrated actors of their generation. Argentine cultural icon Aleandro and the renowned Alterio play the parents of another celebrated actor, Darin, the eponymous…
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Neruda
Inventive constructed biopic – part fiction, part fantasy – of the Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, from director Pablo Larrain (Jackie, No, The Club). A fictional inspector played by Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal (star of previous WFC films Motorcycle Diaries and Even the Rain) is caught in a cat and mouse thriller in…
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Gueros
This feisty Mexican comedy-drama, filmed in black and white on a micro-budget, is the debut feature from director Alonso Ruizpalacios. Mexican movie star Gael Garcia Bernal (who played Che Guevara in one of the WFC’s earliest features, Motorcycle Diaries) is associate producer. Ruizpalacios was born in 1978 and studied stage directing in Mexico City before…