Have you chosen your picks for this year’s Moro Spanish Film Festival?
With sessions already filling up, we’re taking a moment to look at 5 films we think are must-sees!
Rosa’s Wedding (M) | BOOK TICKETS
From writer/director Icíar Bollaín (Yuli, SFF19), the joyous new romantic comedy Rosa’s Wedding features the superb Candela Peña (Truman SFF16, Kiki, Love to Love, SFF17) as a woman who decides to take charge of her life after always putting others first.
About to turn 45, seamstress Rosa (Peña) works in the wardrobe department of a film production company in Valencia. Besides the pressure of her job, she’s also besieged from all sides by the demands of family members: her widowed dad, Antonio (Ramón Barea); her divorced brother Armando (a scene-stealing Sergi López); her possibly-alcoholic sister Violeta (Nathalie Poza); and her grown-up daughter Lidia (Paula Usero). Plus, there’s the constant favours for friends and neighbours…
Heroic Losers (CTC)| BOOK TICKETS
Argentina’s submission for the Best International Feature Film at the 2020 Academy Awards®, Heroic Losers is a classic underdog adventure that has won widespread praise from audiences and critics alike. Featuring an all-star Argentinian cast (including Ricardo Darín and his real-life son Chino on screen together for the first time), the new comedy from Sebastián Borensztein is a rousing tale of working-class solidarity and collective revenge, based on a novel by Eduardo Sacheri.
Rich in local colour and unforgettable characters, Heroic Losers is a homespun Argentine Ocean’s 11 in which revenge has never felt so satisfying.
EMA (CTC) | BOOK TICKETS
One of contemporary cinema’s most exciting and award-winning directors, the remarkable Pablo Larraín (Jackie, Neruda) unites Gael García Bernal with striking newcomer Mariana Di Girolamo in Ema, an immersive and incendiary new drama about art, desire, performance and family, set in the vibrant dance world of the port city of Valparaíso, Chile.
Interspersing sequences of stunning choreography with an ingeniously structured narrative of seduction and manipulation and set to a pulsing electronic score by Nicholas Jaar, Larraín’s mesmerising film hinges on Di Girolamo’s extraordinary performance: tender, volatile and fully alive.
While at War (PG) | BOOK TICKETS
The first Spanish-language production in nearly 17 years from Oscar-winning writer/director Alejandro Amenábar (The Sea Inside, The Others, Agora), While at War is a powerful and hugely resonant historical drama set in the first months of the Spanish Civil War, depicting how the country inexorably slid into nearly four decades of fascism under dictator Francisco Franco.
Deeply intelligent and spectacularly mounted, While at War depicts a nation split between those compelled by egalitarianism, and others driven by reactionary visions of how to make Spain ‘great again’.
Wishlist (CTC) | BOOK TICKETS
Get ready for a road-trip featuring a vibrant patchwork of characters, Wishlist is an adventure of three unforgettable women tackling everything life has to throw them, head-on. Mar (Silvia Alonzo, Lord, Give Me Patience SFF18) is having a hard time of things – she has a broken heart after a recent break-up, and single life is not something she is prepared for. But things are tougher for her best friend, Eva (María León) and Carmen (screen icon Victoria Abril, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) who have met at chemotherapy and are battling cancer together.
Superbly balancing laughter and colour with poignancy, Wishlist is a cinematic ode to being brave, banding together and taking control of destiny itself.
For session times, or to browse this year’s films, visit here.
