Discoveries from Spain World Cinema

Manoli and Fernando, a couple of communist ideas, want to live their love freely, fleeing from any bourgeois convention. At first, the couple rejects the help of her parents, but soon they will begin to give in and accept all kinds of comforts.

These characters are navigating life in a world with no rulebook on gender, sexuality or femininity. Will it make them, or break them? An anthology of award-winning shorts exploring stories of coming out and embracing love through the eyes of visionary filmmakers.

A trigger-happy Nationalist fears retribution from the son of a man he executed. To mollify the boy's anger, he takes a drastic step: he keeps constant watch over the fig tree the boy has planted at his father's gravesite. As the years pass, the man's lonely vigil makes him a tourist attraction, much to the chagrin of his former colleagues.

Mau and Chespi, two lifelong friends, find themselves at a critical moment in their lives. Both are on the verge of their 30th birthday, and both empty-handed. An unexpected event gives them the opportunity they have always been waiting for, to have "everything" overnight. Mau and Chespi embark on a journey that has no map - and no return. In less than twenty-four hours they find eight-hundred thousand dollars and gain the power to access the impossible. However, not everything is destined to fall their way, and their prize turns out to be nothing but payment for a shipment that never arrives.

Leo is immediately set adrift by his new found responsibilities as a single parent, a feeling that is made doubly distressing when Dafne, herself understandably confused and heartbroken by her mother's absence, asks for an "artificial" mother to help her fall asleep at night. It is here that Mañas takes the road less traveled, but to write any more about the plot line he introduces would be unfair to both the viewer and filmmaker alike. Suffice it to say that Leo's actions are both surprising and potentially dangerous, as they require Leo to subsume his own identity to the point where he nearly loses it.

A re-edited version of Mario Bava's "Lisa and the Devil" for the U.S. market, including newly filmed scenes involving a possessed Lisa.

Fernando Fernán Gómez (1921-2007), actor, writer, playwright and film director, was for decades one of the most important figures in Spanish culture. His close friends and relatives reveal another facet in which he stood out above all: that of being an excellent conversationalist, capable of hypnotizing and seducing those who listened to him.

Dolores is a mature and kind woman whose husband abandons her because he can't stand her uncanny generosity. Desperate to get her husband back, she devotes her life to works of charity, which is to go to bed with the other men of the town. Dolores, now "Lolita", becomes so famous that all men seek out her help now. It is through her compassionate sex that she brings back the colour and the happiness to a town that was immersed in sadness. Written by HoMordomo.

The reflective journey of a man who will be haunted by his past, while falling into the madness of a broken mind.

A mother named Ana is celebrating her daughter's birthday when a strange man named Walter shows up asking about her husband, Ricardo. What seemed like an awkward visit quickly turns into a tense and dangerous situation, where Ana begins to uncover dark secrets about her husband's life.

Santi, a 17-year-old boy, plays football with his friends at the entrance of the village while Marco, his childhood friend, returns after a two year absence. The last summer Marco was in town, Santi began to feel something towards him. But while living in that cave, the best thing for him to do was to forget about it and focus on building his life based on tradition. The return of Marco throws Santi off, who had finally managed to forget him. Under the conservative gaze of all the people, he will have to fight against his feelings as he considers his identity for the first time.

Long ago, the architect Stuart Pedrell told his family that he was going to the South Seas. However, his daughter Yes has recently received a postcard from her father that comes from a far less exotic place: L'Hospitalet. Carvalho goes to Bellvitge in order to find Yes' father and to discover why he lied to his family. Pedrell never went indeed to the South Seas. He took refuge in Bellvitge where he was murdered.

After stealing money transported in a train, Sacramento, Big Jim and Tequila arribe to "La Paz" town. They rent a room there in order to hide the money but Sacramento and Big Jim, while Tequila is sleeping, run away with the money. Tequila follow them...

Cundo emigrated to Argentina to seek a new life. Ten years later he returns home, to the funeral of an old friend, Suso. The film chronicles the reunion with family and friends and how Cundo wants to fulfill the ultimate dream of Suso. The film is a tribute to friendship. And above all friendship in a age where it is not so clear why you should remain friends with your childhood friends.

Documentary film about visual effects master Emilio Ruiz del Rio. From his early works on films at 1942, to his last contribution at 2007, Emilio Ruiz talks on his film experiences and traditional trickery, using foreground miniatures, glass shots, and painted cut out miniatures. It shows interviews with some of the professionals he has worked with, like, Rafaela de Laurentiis, Ray Harryhausen, Guillermo del Toro, or Enzo Castellari

Rudi and Silvia, with their children Martín, Federico and Silvina, escape from the city to spend a few days in their country house. Rudi gets into arguments with the neighborhood landlord. Children wander around the area. Martín likes fire. Fede is scared. One day, the abandoned house in the background suffers an unexpected fire and a dead person appears: a homeless man suffocated by the smoke. The children did something. Something horrible. Now, we will have to see a way to return to the desired calm.

Los desafíos presents three separate stories that are linked by an American presence in Spain in the 1960s, with Dean Selmier playing the role of the American male in all three.

The story of Father Antonio Vieira, a 17th-century Portuguese priest who lived in Brazil and worked for better treatment of the Indians and to abolish slavery.

"Aliens Stole My Boyfriend" - Two cute alien chicks crash land their space buggy in the parking lot of the motor court looking for Earth boyfriends. "Coma Girl" - A macabre maintenance man falls in love with a comatose patient at the convalescent home where he works much to the dismay of her faithful husband. "Brain Robbers In Love" - A powerful older woman steals the body of a young woman using a top-secret brain-swapping devise stolen from a government vault. "The Problem With Clones" - A skip-tracer must search through a family of clones to find the sister who murdered her look alike. "Four-Eyes" - A paraplegic hit man is encouraged to pursue his gruesome talent by a man who wants to murder his ex-wife. "Life After Men" - In the near future, males are virtually extinct from disease and are tracked down my man hunters working for the new government.

Jorge is a peaceful hard-working man who seeks a simple, quiet life for himself and his family. One day, he is mugged and humiliated by a gang of thugs led by Kalule, a delinquent from his neighborhood. This event infuriates his son as much for Jorge’s meek acceptance as for the act itself. The son, looking for retribution, ends up getting himself shot. Kalule is sent to jail and when he gets out 18 months later, begins a campaign of terror against Jorge and his family. The authorities do nothing, so Jorge decides to take matters into his own hands.

Ana, a former member of the Basque terrorist group ETA who lives in a small village near the Portuguese border working as a veterinarian and sharing her days with her partner Darío and their daughter Amalia, meets José, an attractive man who participated in the dirty anti-terrorist war against ETA criminals who took refuge in France.

Forged in ancient Egypt, the dagger of Rasputin is a legendary jewel that gives almost absolute power to the person who possesses it. Caesar, Attila and Napoleon were some of its owners. With the death of its last owner, the mad monk Rasputin, nobody knows where is it. The last clue is in Russia. Since then, governments and individuals have sought in vain, with no reliable clues that lead to it. The situation changes when in a Spanish prison, the prisoner Jacinto is identified by the Russian mafia as a carrier of a genetic abnormality associated with the dagger. His cellmates, Paper and Spider, will accompany him on a crazy adventure full of leaks and persecutions that lead them in search of treasure, to the deep heart of Russia.

A young orphan wakes up after wetting his bedsheet. Living under the supervision of nuns, he'll spend night and day attempting to amend his "mistake".

In the Easter holidays of 1967, three friends come to Torremolinos willing to flirt and experience strong emotions. Contact with a new environment, in which while some find the lies that hide behind the luxury and splendor and dangers that accompany life easier, others find true love.

Police try to hunt down a serial killer in 1912 Buenos Aires.

An uncensored monologue by Dani Rovira about today's society.

A look at the life and work of Spanish filmmaker and film critic Fernando Méndez-Leite, as he writes his memoirs and a novel with autobiographical resonances.

200 km follows the marches carried out by Sintel workers to reach Madrid on May 1, 2002. Sintel was a subsidiary of Telefónica that, when it was privatized, was closed, leaving its 1,800 workers on the streets. One year after setting up the "Camp of Hope" with which they occupied Madrid's Avenida de la Castellana for months, and with the promises they were made unfulfilled, Sintel workers began a 10-day, 200-km march to Madrid to claim your job. Premiered on San Sebastian Film Festival 2003.

When $300,000,000 in diamonds are stolen from a fiery plane wreck the British Government become concerned that it might be part of a plot to undermine the value of sterling. They hire professional photographer, amateur lady-killer, and undercover agent Steve Norton to investigate.

An Argentine who emigrated to the United States finds himself by chance in Argentina for business. There he hires a woman, Paula, who is from a traditional but poor family, and he finds himself falling in love with her.

Miguel and Verónica meet in a plane and lie to each other about their true self: she tells him she's a secretary while she actually is the billionaire niece of a duchess, and he tells her he's a trumpet player while he is a Teutonic king. Eventually they fall in love, without knowing about each other's true identity, all of this while Miguel is being urged by his ministers to choose a wife of royal blood and get married as soon as possible, and a revolutionary group, one of which members is Verónica's brother, plans a terrorist attack against the king.

The most ultra-secret telephone number of all is that of the "Hot'Line' that links the heads of state of the United States and Moscow. A conniving double agent manages to steal the top secret phone number and then begins to implement chaos by phoning Washington and Moscow, telling the two powers that their respective spy chiefs are traitors. It's spy versus spy, agent versus double agent, counter spy against counter-counter spy in a rapidly increasing international crisis that finds its solution on the stage of Chinese theater in Barcelona, Spain as the spy leaders, the traitorous agent, a beautiful girl, three old ladies, a young man caught up in the chain of events and a troupe of acrobats collide head on in battle.

Doctor Beiral, torn apart by the internal struggle between his social persona and the dark instincts that torment him, manages to use his investigations to give life to the monster that he has long held within him.

Set in 1984 during the UEFA Euro craze, 7-year-old Rita wants to go to the beach. Unfortunately, her father makes watching the match his priority, and what her father says goes. For the first time in her life, Rita sees and realises that her home is not safe, especially for her mother.

Coy, a sailor without ship, banished from the sea by a navigation accident occurred during his guard, knows in an auction of naval objects in Barcelona to an attractive and mysterious woman, Tangier. This, in hard struggle with an Italian adventurer, Nino Palermo, manages to get a cartographic jewel of eighteen, the Maritime Atlas of Urrutia.

When their car breaks down in the woods, two sisters become the hunted prey of a deranged killer, who captures his victims on film.

Son confesses to his mother, Ana, that he does not feel like a girl; he is a boy. Confused and blocked, Ana will decide to stop in order to observe and understand him and, in the same way, to understand herself. Ana and Son are two sides of the same coin: a mother who does not take care of herself, of her own identity, and a boy in search of his identity with all his strength.

A sort of meta riff on Alexandre Dumas fils' novel The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias or Camille) here in Mexican melodrama form involving the doomed love of a bullfighter and a beautiful but ailing actress/courtesan.

The most crude and atrocious institutional violence of the Spanish State hides behind a true dark figure, an abyss into which this documentary peers through 30 firsthand accounts.

Maria, an inexperienced school psychologist, senses that behind the apparent happiness of an eight-year-old boy, who has just arrived at the school, lies a secret, the consequences of which are unpredictable. If she is to find out, she will have to decipher what Guille’s mind translates into drawings, as well as overcoming his father’s intransigence.

Ursula Alejandra Nicholson, the Carrot Queen, an extravagant American millionaire, arrives in Spain. J.J., a suave and ambitious executive, decides to become involved in the American carrot industry. To do so, he will take advantage of an unhappy bookseller, pulling him into a delirious misadventure that serves as a political satire.

A young woman is married to a much older man. She is not happy as there's something missing in her life. Meanwhile a masked rapist is attacking women in the area and one day attacks her.

In 1940's Madrid. Juan plays piano for Pepita and her on-stage partner Mario. Although Mario really wants to steal Juan for himself, Juan is not interested and Mario resorts to a string of lovers as consolation. When he loves (and leaves) a young nobleman, the young man wants revenge.

How does the vision of the brilliant Spanish filmmaker Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010) remain relevant in a time whose popular culture has little to do with his own? Since to understand the secrets of an artist it is essential to know the person behind, his family, his friends, his collaborators, as well as prestigious filmmakers and actors trace a collective portrait of a creator as singular as he is universal.

Raul, a Puerto Rican born in New York, meets Maria, a young Puerto Rican woman visiting NY, one night. Struck by love at first sight, he travels to Puerto Rico in search of this beautiful girl.

Winter of 1943. Andorra, a small country in the Pyrenees. In the tense calm of a borderland, where echoes of a nearby war reach the ears of the local inhabitants, Antonio and Sara, a young, married couple, are expecting their first child. No one knows exactly what is going on, nor what is being fought over, the priority is just to survive another day. When a family of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution arrives in the valley, the locals will find their lives disrupted and filled with a sense of fear and unease. Sara will have to face her own contradictions and decide whether to follow her head... or her conscience. The past, along with all the secrets that have remained buried under the snow for so many years, are about to surface. The burning cold has reached the mountains.

Madrid, summer of 2010. Commissioner María Ruiz investigates the sinister crime of a young man. With no visible identity and no clues or apparent motive, María will begin an investigation that will become more and more complicated.

In Madrid, a Lawyer gets the freedom for "El Chirlo" a usual 20 years old crook. Chirlo wants to thank Jaime, his lawyer, the defense and treat him for a meal with Rocio, Jaime's girlfriend. Jaime leave so Chirlo and Rocio go together to take a walk. Since then, everything turns bad.

In a remote village where the rain never stops, six-year-old Kyna spends her days playing happily, protected under her father Din's umbrella beard. One night, her beloved dog Nana disappears. To find her, Kyna must face her biggest fear: the rain.

Julio's mother forces him to marry a female student to free him from his love for a male painter.

Rare Ramón Larraz thriller in which Teresa Gimpera and her husband get terrorized by a gang of hippies.

1896. Cuba is at a critical juncture. Following the death of Antonio Maceo, one of its independence leaders, the island is torn between two positions: continuing the fight for independence or annexation to the United States. Spain, through its energetic generals, seeks to maintain its hegemony on the island. A difficult period in which, however, strange love stories also occur.

After a violent storm, Ali awakens on a deserted beach, sick and disoriented. They'll be looking for him and he must keep moving. Ivan, a local Cuban, takes Ali to the apartment of his sister Manuela, a dancer in Havana. At first, she is apprehensive to take in this tormented stranger, but she relents as she feels drawn to this mysterious person who has shown up on her door step. Ali is haunted by nightmares, which bring him to the horror of the interrogation room at Guantanamo, and by startling visions linking his past and his present life. But are these nightmares flash backs to his experiences in the prison or just dreams of a tortured soul?

A movie script is presented to Isabel. After reading it she realizes it's based on an old love affair she had with movie director Mario Fabra, the author of the script.

The movie about a daughter, who leaves home for the first time. Her mother, left behind, doesn't know how to fill the empty place.

After losing her job at a cutting-edge fashion magazine, Marta finds herself forced to abandon the cool, hip world she has always aspired to be a part of and return to the working class neighbourhood she grew up in, where she reunites with her old school friends.