After ten days of cinema, the Malaga Festival comes to an end. The jury will announce the winners tomorrow. At the moment, the Spanish film Second Prize stands out, the story of Los Planetas directed by Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez, and the Mexican film Radical, by Christopher Zalla. In this edition of the Malaga competition there has been good cinema. These are the ten movies you can’t miss:
At the beginning of the nineties in Granada, Jota, Florent and May founded the group Los Planetas, an indie rock music band that immediately stood out. May left the group to return to university and the two boys suffered a crisis when they were left alone. Second Prize is not a film about Los Planetas, it is a story of friendship, drugs and music, which does trace the future of the group from May’s abandonment to the recording in New York of the band’s most successful album, A Week in the engine of a bus (1998). Lacuesta and Rodríguez have given the film an interesting narrative tone. The film smells like a prize.
Ani (Adriana Ozores) lives her widowhood peacefully in her country house. She walks her dog, paints the walls, reads and enjoys everyday life. Her until she falls and breaks her leg. Her daughter, Teresa (María Vázquez) travels from Madrid and moves in with her mother to lend a hand during her recovery. The girl hires some painters to finish the task that Ani has left half done. The Little Loves, directed by Celia Rico, is a slow reflection on the relationships between mothers and daughters, a song to the desired solitude and a vindication of intergenerational friendship.
Robot dreams, by Pablo Berger, is nominated for an Oscar and is proof that very good animated films are made in Spain. Málaga opened its official section with Dragonkeeper, by Salvador Simó, an adaptation of Carol Wilkinson’s novels about an orphan girl who, thanks to her magical powers, takes care of a dragon in China 2,500 years ago during the Han dynasty. A film that continues on the good path taken by Berger’s solitary robot.
Eugenio Derbez plays a teacher who decides to work in the Mexican town of Matamoros, a place where children have very few opportunities. Violence, drug trafficking and poverty prevail in Matamoros. But the teacher’s efforts will serve to unlock the potential of some of his students. Radical, based on real events, is a film that is enjoyable, that gives goosebumps and that could win an award in Malaga, perhaps for best Latin film and perhaps for best male performance for that wonderful teacher he becomes. Derbez.
The Grounds is the disturbing proposal that comes from Argentina from the hand of the director Verónica Chen. A young couple moves from Buenos Aires to the coast of Uruguay. They have money of unclear origin. The girl, four months pregnant, wants to buy a piece of land by the sea and enters into a strange relationship with the property salesman that intensifies little by little until it ends brutally.
Quique is full of good intentions: he speaks in inclusive language, he rides a bicycle, he maintains an open relationship with his girlfriend against her will so as not to be sexist, he recycles, he does not eat meat because livestock pollutes and he has entered politics to bring good to his fellow citizens. To people like the inhabitants of Cañada, a town in Teruel where people play tute, cultivate their fields with fertilizers, enjoy the jota and laugh at the films of Paco Martínez Soria. Emilio Martínez-Lázaro follows the path of the successful Eight Basque Surnames and Eight Catalan Surnames in this fun comedy that is still Eight Maños Surnames.
A group of teenagers celebrates a costume party in the small Galician town of As Neves. During the night, someone posts a sex video of Paula, one of the guests, on social media. The girl disappears and the snow that covers the place makes it difficult to find her. Interesting reflection by Sonia Méndez on the way youth have fun, drugs and the dangers of social networks.
Miguel Faus makes his debut as a feature film director with this film that portrays the Catalan bourgeoisie through the eyes of a Colombian service employee. The girl has to spend the entire month of August in the house of a family in Empurdà made up of a married couple and her two children. Little by little the relationship between the young woman and her employers becomes strained in this interesting film that navigates between drama and comedy.
On a day of heavy rain, a taxi driver leaves for work early. During the day he picks up a client who gives him an address that the driver knows very well: his own house. Does his wife have a lover? Rodrigo García Sáiz presents six stories that occur on that rainy day in this suggestive choral drama.
Ibrahim lives in Madrid. He has a job as a bricklayer and a relationship with Mariana. The couple are expecting a child and live happily after having left their countries and the drama of immigration behind. But they don’t have papers. The police stop Ibrahim one day, place him in a CIE and deport him. For the young man, hell begins again that will take him to the back of the Melilla fence in an attempt to return home to his wife and his baby.
