The Toronto Film Festival and Market has had a special relationship with Spanish cinema in recent years. In the 2023 edition, Pedro Almodovar was the subject of a tribute and heavyweights of cinema shot in Spain last year were screened, such as ‘Cerrar los ojos’ by Víctor Erice, ‘La sociedad de la nieve’ by JA Bayona and the animated films ‘Robot dreams’ by Pablo Berger and ‘Shoot the Pianist’ by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal.
At the Canadian festival, which begins this Thursday and runs until September 15, Almodóvar will once again be present with his latest film, and first spoken in English, ‘The room next door’, fresh from Venice and about to be screened at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Two Spanish productions will compete in the Platform section (with a prize of 10,000 dollars for the winning film): ‘They will be dust’ and ‘Daniela forever’, the latest films of Carles Marques-Marcet and Nacho Vigalondorespectively.
Another section, called Centrepiece, will be the framework for the presentation of the Belén Funes’ second feature film, ‘Los Tortuga’. And in the Discovery section, the first film as a director has found its place. Elena Manrique, ‘Fin de fiesta’. Manrique has produced some of the most resounding successes of Spanish cinema so far this century, such as ‘The Orphanage’, ‘Cell 211’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’.
Her debut behind the camera, starring Beatriz Arjona, Sonia Barba and Edith Martínez Val, focuses on three women who live in the same Andalusian manor house: a lady with mysterious privileges, a housemaid and an African immigrant. As for Funes’ second film, the director of ‘The daughter of a thief’ takes a certain distance in relation to her excellent debut, although it continues to speak of the complexities of family relationships through the mother/daughter relationship or the impossibility of overcoming the loss of father/husband, as well as topics such as the crisis in the countryside or evictions in large cities. ‘Los Tortuga’ has a brilliant debutante, The young Elvira Laraand with Antonia Zegersone of the most important Chilean actresses on the current scene (‘The Club’, ‘A Fantastic Woman’, ‘The Dogs’, ‘The Count’).
Marqués-Marcet changes direction considerably with a very bold approach, that of ‘Polvo será’, a family melodrama starring Angela Molina and the other ‘star’ of current Chilean cinema, Alfredo CastroThe sick woman wants to end her life with assisted living and she makes this known to her sons and daughters. Both characters come from the theatre, so the film also studies very theatrical behaviour. Where the director takes the greatest risk is in the musical transgression that desecrates, in one way or another, the drama: the film is punctuated by a series of musical choreographies, some in a modern style and others that appeal to the Busby Berkeley geometric glamour.
Vigalondo’s last film work dates back to 2006, the fantasy film ‘Colossal’, starring Anna Hathaway. On television he has been more active, with a new installment of the classic ‘Historias para no dormir’ and the creation of ‘Superstar’, a still unreleased series produced by Los Javis and starring Ingrid García Jonsson and Carlos Areces. In Toronto his cinematic return can be seen with ‘Daniela forever’, a film that starts from some personal experiences and is built as a kind of dystopian romance in which a man, devastated by the death of his partneryou are granted the clinical opportunity to control your dreams and relive them permanently. The music is from Hydrogenesse, Last year they released the album ‘Cielo lleno de naves supervivientes’ (Sky filled with alien ships) which is, in fact, the soundtrack for ‘La alarma’ (The Alarm), the episode of ‘Historias para no dormir’ (Stories to Keep You Awake) directed by Vigalondo.
