Ocho apellidos vascos / Spanish Affair (Emilio Martínez Lázaro, 2014)

Dani Rovira and Clara Lago

Spain's biggest-ever box office hit is another film screening in San Sebastián as part of the 'Made in Spain' section, and will also be in London next month. It is daft but a lot of fun.
My review is over at Eye for Film.

10th London Spanish Film Festival, 25th September - 5th October

Libertarias (1996), showing as part of the Vicente Aranda retrospective

Eye for Film have a short preview that I've written about the 10th edition of the London Spanish Film Festival, which starts next week. I'll be reviewing about ten nine of the films in total and will update this post with links as and when the reviews go online, rather than creating separate posts for each one. 

• Con la pata quebrada (Diego Galán, 2013)
• Stella cadente (Lluís Miñarro, 2014)
• Tots volem el millor per a ella (Mar Coll, 2013) [I have also reviewed the film for Take One - here]
• Las maestras de la República (Pilar Pérez Solano, 2013)
• El somni (Franc Aleu, 2014)
• Baratometrajes 2.0 (Daniel San Román and Hugo Serra, 2014) [my post from earlier this year on the longer version of the documentary is here]
• Libertarias (Vicente Aranda, 1996)
• Amantes (Vicente Aranda, 1991)
• Carmen (Vicente Aranda, 2003)

10,000 Km (David Marques-Marcet, 2014)

Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer

I have reviewed 10,000 Km (here) for Eye for Film. The film is showing at the San Sebastián Film Festival (19th-27th September) in the 'Made in Spain' section and will also screen at the London Film Festival next month. Earlier this week it made the shortlist of candidates (alongside Vivir es fácil con ojos cerrados (David Trueba, 2013) and El Niño (Daniel Monzón, 2014) - the latter of which will also be in London) to be Spain's entry for the 2015 Academy Awards. It's well worth catching if you get the opportunity.

Stella cadente / Falling Star (Lluís Miñarro, 2014)

My Eye for Film review of Lluís Miñarro's Stella cadente (2014) can be found here.

This was the only Spanish film I managed to see while I was at the Edinburgh film festival this past weekend but, if you are in the vicinity of Edinburgh this week, I'd recommend My Name Is Salt (Farida Pacha, 2013) (my review for EFF is here), Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang, 2013), and Garnet's Gold (Ed Perkins, 2014).
Stella cadente is one of those films that has so much going on that connections slowly become apparent as it percolates through your mind later, so I do have more to say beyond my review - I'll come back to it on here soon.

London Spanish Film Festival Spring Weekend

Image taken from the LSFF mailer

The London Spanish Film Festival's 4th Spring Weekend started yesterday. You can see an overview that I wrote over at Eye for Film, and I've also written reviews of 15 años y un día / 15 Years and One Day (Gracia Querejeta, 2013) [I'm slightly mystified by the awards attention it has received in Spain], Petit Indi / Little Indi (Marc Recha, 2009) [showing as part of a Sergi López retrospective, and my favourite of the films that are screening], and Todas las mujeres / All the Women (Mariano Barroso, 2013).

Costa da Morte / Coast of Death (Lois Patiño, 2013)

Costa da Morte

At the end of last week I headed to the 20th edition of the Bradford International Film Festival for a few days, namely to see the three Spanish films that were screening - El futuro / The Future (Luis López Carrasco, 2013), Costa da Morte / Coast of Death (Lois Patiño, 2013), and Un ramo de cactus / A Bouquet of Cactus (Pablo Llorca, 2013) - although I saw quite a range of films while I was there.
A post about all three Spanish films will appear at Mediático next week but in the meantime I have reviewed my favourite, Costa da Morte, for Eye for Film.

More Eye for Film reviews

Bertsolari

    I have been reviewing some of the films showing at ¡Viva! 20th Spanish and Latin American film festival at the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester for Eye for Film. If you click on the titles, you will see my reviews of Los últimos días / The Last Days (Àlex Pastor and David Pastor, 2013) and Menú degustació / Tasting Menu (Roger Gual, 2013).
    I went to Manchester for the day on Sunday, to see two films - Carlos Saura's Los golfos / The Delinquents (1960) [yes, that does mean that the return of the Carlos Saura Challenge is imminent!] and Bertsolari (Asier Altuna, 2011), the latter of which is by far my favourite of the five films I've seen from the festival. A review of Los golfos will also appear on Eye for Film this week, but I will write a separate post for the blog so as to continue with the challenge.

Con la pata quebrada / Barefoot and in the Kitchen (Diego Galán, 2013)

Sara Montiel, one of Spanish cinema’s wilder women

Diego Galán’s documentary is screening at the 20th ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American film festival in Manchester – I’ve reviewed it for Eye for Film, here.