Spain & Portugal
Some fathers are the glue of the house; Jacobo Vidal is a wrecking ball. He loves his family, but he shows it by obsessing over their every move. Over 16 years, as the world changes and his kids grow up, his relentless ways could cost him everything.
How did ETA, one of the most violent terrorist organizations in Europe’s history, come to be? It all started with a young university student and poet named Txabi Etxebarrieta, who paved the group’s bloody path when he crossed “the invisible line.”
He’s surly, unorthodox, unapologetically blunt, and he’s about to change your life. Meet the new philosophy teacher, Merlí, who will help his students view the world in a whole new light, both in and out of the classroom.
A rapturous crime fable set in the Dominican Republic, Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias’ Cocote follows Alberto, a kind-hearted gardener returning home to attend his father’s funeral. When he discovers that a powerful local figure is responsible for his father’s death, Alberto realizes that he’s been summoned by his family to avenge the murder. It’s an unthinkable act — especially for him, an Evangelical Christian. But as pressure mounts, he sees few ways out.
A group of swimmers from developing nations are given an opportunity to train for the Olympics in a state-of-the-art sports centre in Thailand. They struggle every day to break boundaries to achieve their dreams.
An illustration of filmmaking’s many stages — mysterious, delirious, playful, frustrated — and complex artistic collaboration with its Cast, Manuel Abramovich’s new film concerns Lucrecia Martel during the making of her fourth feature, Zama. Light Years far surpasses the familiar form of behind-the-scenes features, proving as much an intimate portrait of the working artist as it does an emulation of Martel’s oblique, transcendental tendencies. Directed by Manuel Abramovich.
Academy Award-winning actress and producer Penélope Cruz delivers an extraordinary performance in the newest film from acclaimed director Julio Medem (SEX AND LUCÍA). Honoring the high melodrama of Pedro Almodóvar and Douglas Sirk, it follows Magda as she experiences tragedies and miracles alike. Just as Magda is diagnosed with breast cancer, she meets Arturo (Luis Tosar), a devoted husband and father in the midst of unspeakable loss. Their chance encounter leads both down a path of rebirth.
In Carla Simon’s autobiographical film, six-year-old Frida looks on in silence as the last objects from her recently deceased mother’s apartment in Barcelona are placed in boxes. Although her aunt, uncle, and younger cousin welcome her with open arms, it’s only very slowly that Frida begins to get used to her new home in the countryside. This coming of age drama is an extraordinarily moving snapshot of being a child in an adult world, anchored by flawless performances by its two young stars.
In only his second feature, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa (Horse Money, In Vanda’s Room) brilliantly reworked Jacques Tourneur’s classic I Walked with a Zombie into a reflection on his country’s colonial legacy. A nurse, Mariana (Inês de Medeiros), accompanies Leão (Isaach de Bankolé) to his home on the islands of Cape Verde after an accident leaves him in a coma — but he goes unrecognized by fellow denizens, leaving Mariana trapped with, and eventually entranced by, a mysterious community.
A mesmerizing odyssey into the real, imagined, and nightmarish memories of an elderly Cape Verdean immigrant living in Lisbon, set in both the numbing present day and the mid ‘70s, during Portugal's Carnation Revolution.
Looking back on the life and work of Portuguese filmmaker Joaquim Pinto as he undergoes an experimental HIV treatment, the film is a beautiful portrait of a man looking beyond his own mortality at the world around him.