• '20,000 species of bees' and 'The Messiah' awards win the Forqué Awards
  • Film Zinzindurrunkarratz, the best Spanish cinema travels on a donkey
  • Cine Robot Dreams, Pablo Berger's silent cinema is heading towards the deafening noise of the Oscars

1. Zinzindurrunkarratz, by Oskar Alegria.

The difficulty of its pronunciation is directly proportional to the clarity and simplicity of the proposal. Oskar Alegria surprises with a blockbuster (there are adventures, time travel, bursts of light and memories that fly) whose main special effect is error. The virtuosity of what's missing, the director likes to say. A man (Alegria himself) decides to retrace the path that his grandfather lived. A donkey, an old mute family chamber and the certainty of passing time. That's it. Do not hesitate, the greatest miracle of Spanish cinema of the year.

2. Samsara, by Lois Patiño.

The director of 'Costa da Morte' and 'Lúa Vermella' now presents his most ambitious, most travelled, most stimulating and, what matters, most dream-driven work. Again, this is a ghost story. Once again, cinema is conceived as a space for meditation and encounter. And like never before, the screen bursts is a rare prodigy of faith in the image. It is cinema, as contradictory as it may seem, to be seen with your eyes closed. It is cinema for viewers to recognize each other and in solitude.

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Cinema.

Víctor Erice: "As long as cinemas continue to exist and true filmmakers emerge, the time of cinema will not pass"

  • Written by: LUIS MARTÍNEZ San Sebastián

Víctor Erice: "As long as cinemas continue to exist and true filmmakers emerge, the time of cinema will not pass"

Cinema.

Bayonne, on the verge of the impossible: a passionate and chaotic shoot, a personal gamble and a lot of money at stake

  • Written by: LUIS MARTÍNEZ Madrid

Bayonne, on the verge of the impossible: a passionate and chaotic shoot, a personal gamble and a lot of money at stake

3. Close Your Eyes, by Víctor Erice.

The secret gaze, said Ángel Fernández Santos, to talk about 'The Spirit of the Beehive', of which this film is a reflection and, in a hurry, refutation. There is cinema that is seen and cinema that is experienced or simply remembered. Even if it's being seen for the first time. 'Close Your Eyes' is that kind of cinema. With his handcrafted shots distributed on the screen with an unusual parsimony, his noise of dialogues from another time and his existential sorrow, Erice places the viewer in another place and gives him a unique and long-awaited opportunity to witness the majestic spectacle of eyes that open and others that close. It's cinema and it's memory; It is the possibility of seeing again all that has been mourned, all that has been seen, all that has been suffered and all that has been forgotten.

4. The Snow Society, by Juan Antonio Bayona.

There are doubts. It is easy to get lost in a narrative that is at times too modest, somewhat confusing in the drawing of the characters, excessively attentive to dazzle the viewer. And yet, as the story progresses, the forcefulness of the obvious, of the common, of sacrifice, of forgiveness, of justice is imposed. The Snow Society is exciting, powerful and overwhelming cinema without the burdens of, let's say, the emotional populism in which we live and in which the director himself has lavished himself in the past. It is cinema that is shared with full eyes and a full cinema. It's cinema about the dignity that makes us worthy. It is cinema that vibrates in every shot and brings us back to a disproportionate Bayonne and on the way to the best itself.

5. Creatura, by Elena Martín.

The task of cinema is to name; to give things the value of the word that makes them so. Cinema points out, says this is this. The retina points and makes it its own. Well, that's what Elena Martín does with a delicacy rarely seen. The camera moves between the bodies like two surprised eyes struggling to get used to the light. It's a movie, but it's also a journey into a room that's too dark. What 'Creatura' does is, quite simply, illuminate from the light that the skin itself gives off and begin to give names.

6. Robot dreams, by Pablo Berger.

There are films that become great in everything they are not. You could say that 'Robot dreams' is a movie. Suspicions soon begin, though. It seems to deal with such human issues as loneliness, friendship, loss and heartbreak, but what you see are dogs, robots and many other animals. It gives the impression that those who walk around the screen feel, move and yearn like us, but, as soon as you look closely, surprise!, they are nothing more than cartoons. All of it tells us about a time not so long ago (back in the last century), of a city (New York) not so strange and of a perfectly recognizable (love) story, and yet, no one says a word there. New surprise: she's mute! Not being is, sometimes, the best way to be, to be us.

7. La mala familia, by Nacho A. Villar and Luis Rojo.

We are so used to cinema being there for us to watch, that it blocks our breath when it is the one watching us. A group of friends tell their story, a story of friendship, pain, reunion and fear. They tell each other and, in the process, they tell us. Everything that happens to this group of working-class men in the film happens to them through them: they film themselves, so to speak, in the very act of recognizing themselves. Cinema, suddenly, becomes what Godard said: a sign as the first step of emancipation and even liberation. Look for it and don't let the prize trees keep you from seeing the real heart of the forest. An antidote to posh cinema.

8. La imatge permanent, by Laura Ferrés.

To see from where no one does, from where no one dares, from where there is no profitability or shame. That should be one of the missions of cinema. And that's what Ferrés does. The director elaborates a careful, very funny and extremely sensitive reflection on the value of the image, on the sense of normality, on the strange place in which cinema stops portraying reality, and begins to fable and desire a world that is necessarily different. And better. What impresses and even makes you fall in love is the relief, the freedom and the permanent feeling of estrangement to which a film invites that dares to watch, we have arrived, where no one else wants to do it.

9. 20,000 species of bees, by Estíbaliz Urresola.

Estíbaliz Urresola's feature film directorial debut is basically a film built from the clarity of its protagonist's eyes; From the point of view of a girl who is forced to question what she sees and, perhaps without intending to, forces everyone around her to confess her astonishment simply because they are alive. As is. It's transparent cinema because it's trans. It is cinema with that "all-powerful, enigmatic and paradoxical" force that defines the spirit of any beehive, according to the poet, playwright and expert beekeeper Maurice Maeterlinck.

10. The Dining Room Table, by Caye Casas.

The best cinema, 'Samsara' well knows, is the one you don't see. To travel so as not to see, as John of the Cross said. That is the key to horror cinema, to cinema that offers the spectator the possibility of looking while covering his eyes. 'The Dining Table' pushes the viewer's limit of endurance to the point of anguish. But leaving it to him and his imagination to reconstruct in solitude the horror in its pure state. In a gothic atmosphere of a neighborhood as recognizable, so close, so ours and so, let's face it, ridiculous as a house with gotelé walls, pre-ikea furniture, paintings of deer and dining tables, a couple is faced with the only thing they never wanted to see, with what once seen it is impossible to continue seeing and living. It sounds mysterious, and in truth it is infinitely crueler because it is simply puerile. And unbearable. Fascinating.

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