One more year, and there are now fourteen editions, the best of auteur and independent cinema will arrive in Barcelona with the D’A Film Festival from April 4 to 14 with a program that encompasses the most daring Spanish and Catalan cinema, as well as from a wide range of international films. In total, more than a hundred titles, including feature films and shorts, and the presence of about 60 guests who will present their works and dialogue with the public. Among them stands out the Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, Honorary Prize winner of this 2024, who will present The Chimera.
Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez are in charge of opening this Thursday the contest directed by Carlos R. Ríos with Second Prize, a work of fiction inspired by the history of the Granada group Los Planetas, deans of Spanish indie music, which won the Biznaga de Oro for best film at the Malaga Festival. The closing will be Nina, by Andrea Jaurrieta, a contemporary female western that tells a story of sexual abuse and revenge starring Patricia López Arnaiz and Darío Grandinetti.
One of the strong sections is A collective impulse, which offers an overview of the most insurgent and innovative productions with seven Catalan and three world premieres. It includes titles such as Laugh, sing, perhaps cry, a subversive chronicle of hidden Barcelona directed by Marc Ferrer; On the Go, a surreal road movie directed by María Giséle Royo and Julia de Castro, or The Scam of Love, by Virginia Garcia del Pino, a combative film and a debate about romantic love, with the participation of the writer and journalist Lucía Lijtmaer and the philosopher Josep Maria Esquirol.
Night Work, a documentary about a migrant community that was the great revelation of FIDMarseille 2023, and Tríptico, a surprising debut film from the UPF that wanders between B series and the most sophisticated auteur cinema, are other interesting proposals from Spanish independent cinema. to which are added La Hojarasca, by the Canarian Macu Machín; Mammal, by Liliana Torres; History of shepherds, by Jaime Puertas Castillo; Llobàs, by Pau Calpe, and A common place, by Celia Giraldo.
The short film is another of the highlights of the D’A, which on this occasion has a selection of 39 works, all of them absolute premieres in Catalonia. You can see pieces by Carlos Balbuena, Luis E. Parés, Carolina Astudillo, Irati Gorostidi, the actor Eneko Sagargoy –in his debut behind the camera–, Xacio Baño and the new work by Gala Hernández, For here I am sitting in a can above the world, a reflection on the topic of cryptocurrencies.
Within Direccions, works by Hong Sangsoo, Cristi Puiu (MMXX), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (On Dry Grass), Lisandro Alonso, who reunites with Viggo Mortensen in Eureka, and several shorts by Agnès Varda and Aki Kaurismäki will be shown. And in Specials, Hate songs, by Alejo Levis, will be screened, a psychological thriller about the Rwandan genocide directed by Àlex Brendemühl; Clara Roquet will present The Long Shadows, a series about disappearances for Disney with Marta Etura, Irene Escolar and Belén Cuesta.
Neo Sora, son of the late Ry?ichi Sakamoto, will come to Barcelona with Opus, an emotional concert filmed shortly before the death of the great Japanese composer. On the other hand, the D’A will dedicate this year’s Focus to Catherine Breillat, a veteran French filmmaker who has always moved on its margins, and who achieves in her maturity a recognition that had always eluded her.
His latest work, The Last Summer, had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and was considered by Cahiers du Cinéma as one of the best films of last year. Her films have often focused on the exploration of female desire and have broken down barriers at the boundaries of the representation of sex.
The Focus dedicated to the filmmaker, in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya, consists of nine films, including À ma soeur!, Anatomía del infierno, Parfait amour! and Romance X. Among the festival’s usual venues – CCCB, Mooby Aribau, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Zumzeig and SGAE – Paral·lel 62 and Casa Montjuïc are now added.
