28/09/2007

Trends in Spanish cinema will be in the spotlight at the 12th edition of Cinespaña, which opens today in the south-east French city of Toulouse and is the most important event dedicated to Spanish cinema in France.

Until October 7, Cinespaña will hold its traditional competition section, focused on the discovery of new talent in order to promote the distribution of their films in France, a territory difficult to break into for young Spanish filmmakers.

Presided over by director Jean Becker, the jury will choose between nine features aspiring to live up to the success of Daniel Sánchez-Arévalo’s DarkBlueAlmostBlack [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], last year’s winner.

Competition entries comprise Jaime Rosales’ Solitary Fragments [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a 2007 Cannes Un Certain Regard entry (see article); Rafa Cortés’ Me (FIPRESCI Prize at Rotterdam, special mention at Malaga and a 2007 Cannes Critics’ Week entry); and The Borgia [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Antonio Hernandez, news), who will also be presenting his El menor de los males (see news) in the Panorama section.

Other Violette d’Or contenders are Atlas of Human Geography [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Azucena Rodriguez, Judith Colell’s 53 Winter Days, Juan Carlos Falcon’s The Wooden Box, Cesc Gay’s Fiction (Best Film at the 2007 Mar del Plata Festival) Mateu Adrover’s Fuerte Apache and Manuel Lombardero’s Tuya siempre [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“Always Yours”).

No less than 17 films feature in this year’s Panorama section, including Álvaro Diaz Lorenzo’s feature debut Café solo o con ellas (Audience Award at the Malaga Film Festival), José Luis Cuerda’s The Education of Fairies (based on the Didier Van Cauwelaert novel and nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Goya in 2007, see news) and two features screened in official competition at San Sebastian last year: Go Away From Me (Víctor García León) and Celia's Lives [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Antonio Chavarrías).

Further titles in the busy line-up are: Cándida (Guillermo Fesser), An Invisible Woman (Gerardo Herrero), Faltas leves (Manuel Valls and Jaume Bayarri), Miguel and William by Inés París, Scandalous (Álvaro Begines), The Near East (Fernando Colomo), Skizo (Jesús Ponce), La sombra de nadie (Pablo Malo), Modesty [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (David and Tristán Ulloa), Sighs from the Heart (Enrique Gabriel), El vuelo del guirre (Teodoro and Santiago Rios), and Doghead (Santi Amodeo).

Completed by a range of alternative and experimental films, documentaries, shorts, a carte blanche to Jorge Semprún (festival patron), a focus on productions from the Community of Valencia and a tribute to producer Elias Querejeta (a regular partner of Carlos Saura, Víctor Erice, Fernando León de Aranoa and Gracia Querejeta), Cinespaña 2007 will be hoping for its share of discoveries and an attendance in line with the 17,000 filmgoers of its 2006 edition.

(Translated from French)