A documentary rescues the lifeless life of the missing child painter in the 80s

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"Reality", reflects David Moya, "does not have a

structure ".

The one speaking is the director of

the documentary recently presented at the Malaga Festival and whose absent protagonist is the famous child painter of so many morbid after-dinner talks, of so many news programs with the soul of clumsy true

The film, in effect, returns to the missing life of

, but it does so as a Chantal Ackerman character would, more attentive to each missing detail than to the new revelation, the mystery solved or the previously forgotten clue and now, suddenly, surprising.

Everything is simpler, everything is simply more real.

The film starts in 2018. That year, the family of the so-called child painter, who at just 13 years old vanished on the way to his drawing classes one bad day in 1987, decided to recover his work made up of charcoal, labeled sketches, some oil... .and exhibited it in its entirety (or almost) in a room in Malaga.

Moya remembers that she suddenly saw it clearly.

He, who had shared a school (El Divino Pastor) with David as a child, clearly understood that this was the time to start the documentary that he had been planning for so long.

"For any man from Malaga, and even more so being from the same neighborhood, David is a constant presence, or absence," he says.

And there he went to discover what the infinite information, the innumerable programs and the highly questionable investigations into the disappearance of, once again, the child painter had hidden from him.

What emerges from the screen is a

film about nothing more than a child, a passionate child like so many others for a passion that was none other than drawing.

It is not about discovering the genius that the media sold, but the child that they hid.

patiently follows how Raúl, David's little brother, reviews one of his drawings that had faded over time.

And from there, the tape gropes its way through nothing more than the memory of a happy, fun boy, an accomplice of his two brothers... The reality is like that, his skin is transparent, peaceful and deep.

"Somehow", reflects the director, "I imagined the possibility of telling the future life that did not become David through, why not, his brothers".

Some of it is in the movie.

Any inattentive viewer, the first thing he looks for is that feat that the newspapers reported and the television programs reproduced as if it were a young Picasso.

And yet, what is found is something much clearer and shared by all: it is the perfect memory of time.

There you can see the traces left by Ibáñez, the one from Mortadelo, in a young reader and the marks of the collective imagination through television series like 'V'

movies like '

' or characters like Michael Jackson.

But what is relevant is something else.

As in a revelation, it is right to see that David's passion was and is Raúl's.

And also Jorge's.

We talk about his brothers who are now over 40 and paint, draw and are obsessed with the same art that David was obsessed with.

And now yes, the director's intuition makes sense: the life that was not David's remains somehow in the one that is Raúl and Jorge's.

The result is a film that is serious, simple and, most importantly, real.

It is not a

.

It is the exact opposite of a

And there its beauty, its absent beauty, its certain reality.

The actress María Vázquez at the presentation of 'Matria'. Jorge ZapataEFE

Huge Maria Vazquez

For the rest, the official section showed his first two films in competition.

One came from the Berlinale, where it was screened in the Panorama section, and the other, from Málaga itself, so to speak: '

', by Álvaro Gago, and

by Mario Hernández.

The two are united by the power of raw, naked and very sincere interpretations.

And a little more.

The first follows in the footsteps of a woman named Ramona embodied with an iron will by

And it's not easy.

Ramona works in an industrial cleaning company at the same time that she does it collecting mussels.

And all this, while she fights with her 18-year-old daughter, with her husband, with her boss who wants to lower her salary and with everyone who dares to argue with her space and her word.

The film successfully folds, and makes it submissive, to the movements of its protagonist, feverish and calm, violent and tender, energetic and fainting, funny and hurtful, all at the same time, until extracting from the petite body of an enormous actress a illuminated portrait of life itself.

No more.

Before the recently presented feature film, and with the same title, its director made a documentary.

That one recounted Francisca's life in real body (and time).

The texture of the truth guided the steps to a work designed to be a witness.

Now, that same rough skin of reality is the one that orders each shot planned as a burst of sincerity.

What is seen now is a film that, rather than simply being seen, is lived and felt like a blow to the retina.

And this thanks to an actress with previous works such as '

' or '

' who, without a doubt, deserves more.

The case of

is different.

The debutant in the feature film Mario Hernández demonstrates his faith and his admiration for Richard Linklater with a film built from the word and in one night (or a little more).

The actors

have been lovers since even before the invention of time.

They see each other from time to time and on the skin of desire always postponed they review losses, impossible futures and rather sad pasts.

Each one lives their accounts on their own, but, from time to time, they get entangled by telling stories.

All the virtue of the film resides in its conviction in the word and in its eagerness to respect the hidden semantics of an image that is nothing more than, once again, a word.

Annoying, yes, the little concealed effort to become a generational flag.

At times, the eagerness for the proclamation and the overly round sentence hinder the rhythm of what is narrated.

Be that as it may, the work of two actors (with María, three) remains unblemished.

Perfect even.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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