21/11/2025 - Filmmakers such as Sophy Romvari, Lucrecia Martel and Pedro Pinho, among others, are competing in an official section focused on new trends in the contemporary audiovisual scene

This Sunday sees the kick-off of the 15th edition of Márgenes in Madrid. This international festival, running until 30 November, champions artistic conviction and creative freedom. Through its various sections, it brings together young talent and the work of established filmmakers, with originality and personal visions lying at the core of its programme. The festival also pays particular attention to new generations, the modern era, technology and the industry, via a multidisciplinary line-up that includes AV shows, encounters and talks, as well as audiovisual literacy programmes and a raft of professional activities (see the news).

In this year’s Official Section, the event brings together 11 titles that provide a map of contemporary cinema at its most expansive, from the intimate to the global, from formal innovation to thematic urgency. It opens with Blue Heron [+see also:
film review
film profile], the feature debut by Sophy Romvari, which turns an immigrant household in Vancouver into a stage for familial tension and memory tarnished by guilt. With Landmarks [+see also:
film review
interview: Lucrecia Martel
film profile], Lucrecia Martel makes the leap to creative documentary with a story about crime, territory and identity in the heart of Argentina; Kontinental ’25 [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Radu Jude examines guilt, housing and capitalism in contemporary Romania; and with Resurrection [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan delves into memory and desire from a rather spectral angle. The piece Heads or Tails? [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alessio Rigo de Righi and M…
film profile] by Italy's Matteo Zoppis and Alessio Rigo de Righi offers a legend made real in a rural tale shot through with myth and doubt; Pedro Pinho probes the relationship between gender, labour and representation in the Portuguese flick I Only Rest in the Storm [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pedro Pinho
film profile] from a playful, fragmented perspective; and the Mexican production Frío metal by Clemente Castor ventures into the corporeal and the material, where the image rusts and sound leaves traces.

The section also hosts short films, such as Loynes by Belgium's Dorian Jespers and When the Geese Flew by New Zealander Arthur Gay, works that probe the limits of the phantasmal and the remote, respectively, reflecting contemporary disorientation; 1:10 by Swiss director Sinan Taner (see the interview); and Control Anatomy by Mahmoud Alhaj, centred on the genocide in Gaza, and its politics of fear and violence.

Elsewhere, the nationally focused Escáner competition once again trains the spotlight on Spanish independent cinema, ranging from Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes [+see also:
film review
interview: Gabriel Azorín
film profile] by Gabriel Azorín to Ariel [+see also:
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interview: Lois Patiño
film profile] by Lois Patiño, with a programme that unfurls a terrain where the sacred, the corporeal and the virtual intertwine. This section also brings together different formats, lengths and styles: from short, radical pieces such as Furada negra by Berio Molina, Nayan by Carla Andrade and 10K by Gala Hernández López to longer formats like Downriver a Tiger [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Víctor Diago and Balearic [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Ion de Sosa
film profile] by Ion de Sosa; plus, new voices such as Candela Soto (with Yrupē [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Carlos Saiz (with Lionel) and Julia Mellen (with the short film Abortion Party) will converse with established auteurs like Sergio Oksman (with A Scary Movie [+see also:
film review
film profile]) in a programme that reveals the vibrant pulse of the present.

(Translated from Spanish)