“Girl, Unknown,” the sophomore feature from Spanish director Pablo Maqueda (“Dear Werner”), currently ranks as one of the early buzz titles at the Málaga Film Festival, even before its world premiere.
The film adapts Paco Bezerra’s stage play “Grooming.” Maqueda, Bezerra and Haizea G. Viana wrote the script, which retains the play’s unsettling cat-and-mouse element. It delves into the recesses of desire, raising questions on depravity, sexuality, and the drive to be fulfilled. The story unfolds a pendulum swinging power dynamic between the seemingly innocent 16 year old Carolina, and a middle aged man she meets in a park named Leo. What begins and is a case of grooming morphs into something far more complex due to Carolina not being all she seems. Maqueda shows a Hanekesque talent in balancing the disturbing with the thrilling. On the film, Maqueda told Variety: “I feel the film as a kaleidoscope and the characters as masks.
The film adapts Paco Bezerra’s stage play “Grooming.” Maqueda, Bezerra and Haizea G. Viana wrote the script, which retains the play’s unsettling cat-and-mouse element. It delves into the recesses of desire, raising questions on depravity, sexuality, and the drive to be fulfilled. The story unfolds a pendulum swinging power dynamic between the seemingly innocent 16 year old Carolina, and a middle aged man she meets in a park named Leo. What begins and is a case of grooming morphs into something far more complex due to Carolina not being all she seems. Maqueda shows a Hanekesque talent in balancing the disturbing with the thrilling. On the film, Maqueda told Variety: “I feel the film as a kaleidoscope and the characters as masks.
- 3/15/2023
- by Callum McLennan
- Variety Film + TV
In Spain there is a tradition called “la hora del vermut” (the vermouth hour) which refers to a little stretch of time before lunch when you sip vermouth to prepare your stomach for the meal to come. Spanish director Jonás Trueba’s “You Have to Come and See It,” one of the late-breaking joys of the Karlovy Vary competition, only just crosses la hora mark, but it is as sociable and swiggable as a draught or ten of sweetly fortified wine. In fact, it’s an aperitif that proves so satisfying, so simple and sunny and sage, that you might find yourself filling up on its drowsily erudite, oddly nourishing pleasures and forgetting about lunch altogether.
Even the opening titles are a zippy, witty delight, popping up onscreen in time to a skittery uptempo piano piece which, as we learn by the burst of applause that cutely occurs just as Trueba’s writer-director credit appears,...
Even the opening titles are a zippy, witty delight, popping up onscreen in time to a skittery uptempo piano piece which, as we learn by the burst of applause that cutely occurs just as Trueba’s writer-director credit appears,...
- 7/8/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Nathalie Trafford’s Paraiso Production Diffusion and Jérôme Vidal’s Noodles from France and Roberto Butragueño’s Elamedia and Luis Miñarro’s Eddie Saeta from Spain have teamed to co-produce Javier Rebollo’s “Dans la chambre du Sultan.”
A multi-prized Spanish film director, Rebollo won San Sebastian’s best director with “La mujer sin piano” (The Woman Without a Piano) and a Fipresci prize with “El muerto y ser feliz” (“The Dead Man and Being Happy”) at the festival’s 2009 and 2012 editions.
“Dans la chambre du Sultan” (Close to the Sultan) turns on Gabriel Veyre (pictured), the most gifted of Auguste and Louis Lumière’s camera operators who traveled to Morocco for three months in 1900, hired by the Sultan Moulay Abd el-Aziz to initiate him into the mysteries of cinema. He remained for his lifetime.
Starring Vincent Macaigne (Louis Garrel’s “Two Friends”), “Dans la chambre”’s cast will also...
A multi-prized Spanish film director, Rebollo won San Sebastian’s best director with “La mujer sin piano” (The Woman Without a Piano) and a Fipresci prize with “El muerto y ser feliz” (“The Dead Man and Being Happy”) at the festival’s 2009 and 2012 editions.
“Dans la chambre du Sultan” (Close to the Sultan) turns on Gabriel Veyre (pictured), the most gifted of Auguste and Louis Lumière’s camera operators who traveled to Morocco for three months in 1900, hired by the Sultan Moulay Abd el-Aziz to initiate him into the mysteries of cinema. He remained for his lifetime.
Starring Vincent Macaigne (Louis Garrel’s “Two Friends”), “Dans la chambre”’s cast will also...
- 9/21/2021
- by Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
Barcelona-based studio Filmax has acquired international sales rights to Avelina Prat’s feature-debut “Vasil,” which is currently in pre-production. Filmax also handles Spanish distribution.
“Vasil” is produced by Barcelona-based Distinto Films, which backed Patricia Ferreira’s “The Wild Children,” in co-production with Bulgaria’s Activist 38, which made Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova’s “Cat in the Wall.”
“This new Distinto Films’ project tackles very contemporary European issues , with a very personal and deep insight into the story’s characters,” said Filmax CEO Carlos Fernández.
Inspired by the director’s own experiences, the feature follows Vasil, a chess and bridge champion arriving in Spain from Bulgaria. He meets Maureen, an Irish woman who decides to help him, Yorgos, a Greek who gives him work; and Alfredo, who offers his sofa as a temporary home.
Principal photography is scheduled from May in Valencia and Barcelona.
Ivan Barnev, a best actor winner...
“Vasil” is produced by Barcelona-based Distinto Films, which backed Patricia Ferreira’s “The Wild Children,” in co-production with Bulgaria’s Activist 38, which made Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova’s “Cat in the Wall.”
“This new Distinto Films’ project tackles very contemporary European issues , with a very personal and deep insight into the story’s characters,” said Filmax CEO Carlos Fernández.
Inspired by the director’s own experiences, the feature follows Vasil, a chess and bridge champion arriving in Spain from Bulgaria. He meets Maureen, an Irish woman who decides to help him, Yorgos, a Greek who gives him work; and Alfredo, who offers his sofa as a temporary home.
Principal photography is scheduled from May in Valencia and Barcelona.
Ivan Barnev, a best actor winner...
- 11/10/2019
- by Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
I wish there was a way I could start this review of Carla Simón’s extraordinary Summer 1993 with its final scene. Not because there are eye-opening or plot-unravelling clues nestled inside it, but because it crystallizes what makes Simón’s debut stand out as one of the most memorable in recent years: an effortless ability to capture what it is like to deal with a tragedy of the kind its young heroine undergoes – the way traumas can be compartmentalized, but may always resurface.
Part of the magic, I suspect, owes to the fact the Catalan 32-year-old writer-director crafted her first feature drawing from her own childhood memories. Summer 1993 chronicles a few hazy weeks in the life of Frida (Laia Artigas), a 6-year-old curly haired girl who, having lost both father and mother, moves away from her grandparents’ Barcelona home to settle with uncle and aunt in the Catalan countryside. We...
Part of the magic, I suspect, owes to the fact the Catalan 32-year-old writer-director crafted her first feature drawing from her own childhood memories. Summer 1993 chronicles a few hazy weeks in the life of Frida (Laia Artigas), a 6-year-old curly haired girl who, having lost both father and mother, moves away from her grandparents’ Barcelona home to settle with uncle and aunt in the Catalan countryside. We...
- 5/25/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Summer 1993 — Catalonia, Spain
So cathartic was Summer 1993 that my personal psyche will be marked by it forever. Why this story, about a six year old girl who quietly and slowly comes to terms with the death of her mother and how the process, invisible to anyone watching, culminates in a sudden crescendo of emotion moved me to tears, is what you must find out on your own.
No one knows the emotions of another person unless communication, self-knowledge and compassion work in favor of knowing. Yes tears and laughter mean a lot but without tears and laughter, there are thousands of feelings not communicated which result in actions whose meaning is unknown. And for children who have no words for their feelings or why they act as they do, adults can only surmise and intuit if they are able.
A child of six has no way of knowing death; children are fearless,...
So cathartic was Summer 1993 that my personal psyche will be marked by it forever. Why this story, about a six year old girl who quietly and slowly comes to terms with the death of her mother and how the process, invisible to anyone watching, culminates in a sudden crescendo of emotion moved me to tears, is what you must find out on your own.
No one knows the emotions of another person unless communication, self-knowledge and compassion work in favor of knowing. Yes tears and laughter mean a lot but without tears and laughter, there are thousands of feelings not communicated which result in actions whose meaning is unknown. And for children who have no words for their feelings or why they act as they do, adults can only surmise and intuit if they are able.
A child of six has no way of knowing death; children are fearless,...
- 12/5/2017
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
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