Bruno, a young man coming of age, juggles between caring for his 86-year-old grandmother Nati, working however he can, and enjoying his youth. When the grandmother gets a place in a nursing home, he is faced with the decision to let go of the only family he has ever known. This is the story told in The Imminent Age, the debut from Col·lectiu Vigília (formed by six students of Barcelona’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra: Clara Serrano Llorens, Gerard Simó Gimeno, Laura Corominas Espelt, Ariadna Ulldemolins Abad, Laura Serra Solé y Pau Vall Capdet). Created as their Final Project, and which, after its world premiere in the Official Section “Generation +16!” of the 2024 Giffoni Film Festival (Italy) where it won The CGS Award (see the news), and its national premiere in the Enfants Terribles section of the Gijón Film Festival where it also won the Award for Best Screenplay for a Spanish Film (see the news), has just been nominated for Best New Director at the Gaudí Awards, prior to its Spanish premiere on Friday 13 December, courtesy of Ringo Media.

Starring Miquel Mas Martínez and Antonia Fernández Mir as the young man and his grandmother, the film discusses the contradictory relationships between generations, of relationships where love and burnout can coexist. It also talks of a generation’s desire for independence and the paradoxes we face when caring for our elders, of that old age and that death to which we are all heading. And of the reality of the working classes, of the precariousness for both generations, of those who leave and have to find a place to grow old and die with dignity. It addresses the youth who try to survive in today's world, of their need to earn a living at any price, to work for a pittance in order to make ends meet, and of the difficulty of finding their place in society and building a life of their own. 

The relationship between these generations is well told. The tenderness, complicity, tedium, exhaustion, silence, loneliness and fear in the protagonists who represent them is told with simplicity and subtlety. More through what is not said than what is said, it is plain and simple with no edifying pretensions. The images of their daily lives that run through the film leave time and space for the audience to reflect and draw their own ideas and conclusions. A meal where the grandson tries to get his grandmother to eat more than she would like to, another where they keep each other company with barely a word, the young man riding his bike in his job, when he loses his job and tries to write a CV with the help of a friend, celebrating his eighteenth birthday with his friends, avoiding calls from the nursing home where the grandmother has been given a place after months of waiting. These are some of the images that, with sensitivity, delicacy and without pretentiousness, say more than the words themselves. The conflicts of their protagonists are narrated with a lightness and a certain depth. Those contradictory feelings and emotions that inhabit them are reflected with sobriety and honesty.

The Imminent Age is a moving debut; a small film that achieves what it sets out to be. A debut film full of tenderness and truth, beautiful and painful, about the precariousness of two generations far apart in time, their encounters and misunderstandings, the life stories of the working classes living in the city outskirts. A debut with soul that reveals young creators worth following.

The Imminent Age was produced by Ringo Media.