19/11/2024 - The archipelagos form part of the festival's Trasfoco section, with films such as 7 Walks with Mark Brown, The Flats and Viet and Nam, among others, competing in the official section

The 14th edition of the Lanzarote Film Festival opens on Thursday 21 November in Arrecife and will run throughout the Canary Islands until 1 December. Featuring plenty of cinema, excursions, talks, activities for children and a central theme in its Trasfoco section: the idea of the island and archipelago, highlighting the beauty, wonder and awe that the concept evokes.

To illustrate this section, films of various formats will be shown in the municipalities of Lanzarote and La Graciosa. The selected titles portray islands from different perspectives, including idyllic paradises, prisons, refuges, strategic spaces, places of scientific research or even areas of isolation. This is seen in feature films such as Caro diario, a modern classic by Italian director Nanni Moretti; Gulliver's Travels, adapted by British director Peter Hunt in 1977; and El ángel exterminador, a claustrophobic nightmare by the Aragonese master Luis Buñuel.

The official competition section, which starts screening on 26 November, includes seven films with themes such as the oppression of human rights, the consequences of racism and colonialism, the impact of armed conflicts, extreme lifestyles and the beauty that still persists in a world on the brink of collapse.

These include 7 Walks with Mark Brown [+see also:
film review
film profile], a French documentary directed by Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré who portray how in the Normandy coastal landscapes, under the gaze of an English botanist, people and cameras stop at the flowers. Another French film and winner of CPH:DOX, The Flats [+see also:
film review
interview: Alessandra Celesia
film profile] by Alessandra Celesia shows how Joe relives scenes from his childhood marked by the conflict in his apartment in a block in a Catholic area of Belfast where the losses were particularly tragic. A Fidai Film [+see also:
film review
interview: Kamal Aljafari
film profile] by Kamal Aljafari, awarded at Visions du Réel, narrates how in the summer of 1982, with the Israeli invasion of Beirut, the army broke into the Palestinian Research Centre and took away its entire archive. A counter-narrative is created that challenges this loss, recovering and restoring the stolen memories of Palestinian history. Viet and Nam [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], the gay love story by Vietnamese director Trương Minh Quý, selected for Un Certain Regard at Cannes, shows how two young miners share moments together, aware that one of them will leave for a new life in a distant land. Rising Up at Night [+see also:
film review
interview: Nelson Makengo
film profile] by Nelson Makengo, selected for the Berlinale Panorama and awarded at Visions du Réel, reflects how an ambitious project to build Congo's largest power plant leaves 17 million people in darkness and uncertainty. Kinra, a Peruvian feature film by Marco Panatonic, tells the story of a young boy from the Andes who is trying to make his way in Cusco, and his conversations with his mother, who still lives alone in the countryside and sadly believes that her son will not return. Tatiana Mazú González's Argentinean film Todo documento de civilización completes the official section, a fresh look at a crossroads that marks the border between the city of Buenos Aires and the apparently normal conurbation, but where ten years ago a teenager disappeared forever at the hands of the police.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)