The twenty-fourth edition of the Malaga Spanish Film Festival will have in its Official Section twenty-three feature films, fifteen Spanish (four of them out of competition) and eight Latin American. Among them is The City of Beasts , by Henry Rincón, which is presented in Colombia and Ecuador.
In the presentation of the feature films that will compete in the Official Section of the Malaga Spanish Film Festival, the director of the contest, Juan Antonio Vigar, highlighted that the team “needed to return to normality, to shootings, to festivals”, a process that, he pointed out, “has united us in the face of the most complex reality”, marked by the coronavirus.
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Vigar recalled how complicated, “how delicate”, it was to celebrate the twenty-third edition last August, when the first wave of the pandemic was barely being overcome, and highlighted the “remarkable change” in the current situation in which “we can already glimpse the end, vaccinations have increased and infections are decreasing ”. Even so, aware that they are once again the focus of all eyes, being the first face-to-face festival in Europe to be held in 2021, “we must maintain security measures. This will be a festival in an intimate way, continuous in format, but adapted to the circumstances. The social event remains for the next edition ”, the twenty-fifth that will come in the month of March, at least that is the intention.
In figures, the festival surpassed this year with 2,321 films registered, 715 of them directed by women (30.8%), but the percentage rose in those selected to 36%, with 65 films by directors. In addition, the number of women also grew in production, with 77 tapes, which corresponds to 42.5% of those selected. “There is a lot of comedy (proof of the desire of the sector to breathe and smile), also social drama, terror, others more vocational, and many of clear authorial vision”. The festival will open with the musical El cover , with the behind-the-scenes debut of Spanish actor Secun de la Rosa.
In addition, several debut operas have been programmed, among them Chavalas , by Carol Rodríguez Colás, a cinema about her neighborhood, “not being social cinema” but about “love between friends”, according to the director; and Dead man does not know how to live , by Ezekiel Montes, a film “tremendous, dry and hard that inside talks about things that are being lost, such as loyalty, friendship, honor.” Ama , by Julia de Paz, is a “deconstruction of the myth of motherhood”, and With whom you travel , by Hugo Martín Cuervo, tells a journey in ‘bla bla car’, with its comic and sometimes surreal situations, starring Salva Reina . The fifth debutante is a high school teacher, Macarena Astorga, author of the thriller La casa del caracol , with Paz Vega and Javier Rey; and the sixth, Ainhoa Rodríguez, who opts for a very authorial approach to talk about the strength of women in a small town in Badajoz, with non-professional interpreters, in Destello bravío . Finally, within the group of newcomers, there is The Consequences , the second film by the Chilean Claudia Pinto, a film about “an erupting family that loves each other so much that to protect itself, it lies.”
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Along with the newcomers are new works by veteran filmmakers, such as El belly del mar , a black and white visual poem by Agustí Villaronga; or El substitute , a story of the Nazis who lived under protection in Spain, by Óscar Aibar and produced by Gerardo Herrero. With them they participate Live is Life , Dani de la Torre’s “most personal” film, half written with Albert Espinosa and inspired by his own adolescence in the summers of Galicia.
As for the Latin share, these are the films that will participate in the contest: The best families , by the Peruvian Javier Fuentes León, a satire on two aristocratic Lima families full of prejudices; Amalgama, by Carlos Cuarón, and 15 hours, by Judith Colell, representing the Dominican Republic, which forms “a complaint of mistreatment in the upper classes,” as explained by the director. This is the first time that the filmmaker competes in Malaga. Added to this list are: How the Queens Die , by Argentine Lucas Torturro, Mulher Ocean , a curious proposal by Brazilian Djin Sganzerla, and Light Years , by Uruguayan Joaquín Mauad, a ‘road movie’ with family drama. Also competing is the multiproduction Karnawal , by Juan Pablo Félix, with support from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, France, Mexico and Norway, which covers the theme of love between a father and a son with malambo, and La ciudad de las Wild Animals , by Henry Rincón, which is presented in Colombia and Ecuador, a portrait of Colombian youth with “an uncomfortable argument”, according to its director.
The Official Section is completed with four Spanish comedies that are out of competition: Lamentable Histories , whose director, Javier Fesser, will receive the Biznaga de Honor of this edition; Operation Camarón , by Carlos Therón, a “deeply Andalusian and vitalist” film; Sevillanas de Brooklyn , by Vicente Villanueva, and García y García , by Ana Murugarren, who will close the contest.
