With: Guillermo Toledo, Tristán Ulloa, Blanca Romero

The lives of Manuel (Tristán Ulloa), Ana (Blanca Romero) and Julio (Guillermo Toledo), friends since adolescence, are a fraud. They are in their late 30’s, have achieved everything that brings happiness, according to our society, yet are in desperate search for a solution to their immense loneliness and dissatisfaction. Their paths cross in a warm summer night after not having seen each other for some time, and they initiate a trip towards the heart of the night: sex, drugs, alcohol and excess; an escape towards adolescence as the only way to avoid reality. After is the last stop, the last open bar… the end of the journey. With After, filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez (7 Virgins) compellingly portrays three people fervently, desperately seeking connection. The film displays superb performances by its ensemble cast: renowned Spanish actors Guillermo Toledo (The Two Sides of the Bed) and Tristán Ulloa (Sex and Lucía), along with the debutant Blanca Romero.

This award-winning, 6-part documentary uncovers the little-known history of a clandestine group of anti-Franco filmmakers operating under total secrecy in ‘60s and ‘70s Spain. Their saga, nearly lost to oblivion along with their films, provides crucial witness to the end of the Franco era while simultaneously revealing a bold and formally innovative period in Spanish Cinema.

Prominently featured in the series are interviews with the pillars of Independent Spanish Cinema, including Pere Portabella, Llorenc Soler, Manuel Esteban, Antoni Padros, Carles Barba, and others.

The Nazis called him Alaric. The British called him Garbo. Born in Spain, Juan Pujol (his true name) was one of the most successful double agents in history. Director Edmon Roch utilizes a fascinating mixture of fictional reconstruction, archive footage and film extracts to tell the unknown and real story of the Spaniard Joan Pujol Garcia, who fought on both sides in two wars without ever having held a weapon. The peak of his career came in 1944, when he succeeded in diverting German defense forces to Calais while the Allied landings were taking place in Normandy, thus averting considerable bloodshed. Rumor had it he died in 1949 after contracting malaria in Angola—until he was discovered more than 30 years later living a new life, yet again, in Venezuela.

With: Pablo Pineda, Lola Dueñas.

Me Too! is the film of the year. A delightful, offbeat comedy-drama that tells an unusual love story, which challenges society’s deeply ingrained prejudices.Daniel (Pablo Pineda) and Nuria (Lola Dueñas) work together and they’re friends. Daniel is in love with Nuria, but she’s reluctant to go any further. Will Nuria eventually fall in love with Daniel? Me Too would be a conventional “boy-meets-girl” story if wasn’t for the fact that Daniel has Down Syndrome. Touching, funny and sexy, this unconventional romantic comedy, directed by debutants Pastor and Naharro, talks openly about the desires and sexual needs of people with disabilities in a way not seen before on screen.

How does a pop duet work out for impulsive and irreverent six-year-old Marina and 75-year-old Marita? Mischievous Marina plays to the camera, ignoring the chiding of her aged grandmother, Marita. Marita’s crumbling house was built by her long-dead husband. She moved in when they married, over 53 years ago, and nothing much has changed since. Now her home is under threat; the neighborhood is being torn down, being replaced with charmless apartments. 

This film is available for public screenings. Request a quote: info@pragda.com

With: Manuel Martínez, Marieta Orozco, Núria Casas and Marta Carbonell.

Stigmata is a hauntingly beautiful and lyrical tale based in the Italian cult comic book by Mattotti and Piersant. Multiawarded Adán Aliaga’s (My Grandmother’s House) debut feature is a thoughtful journey into the intertwining realms of faith and character.
The story is adapted from Lorenzo Mattotti and Claudio Piersanti’s acclaimed comic, and told through a hulking, gentle giant of a man, Bruno (played by Spanish shotput champion Manuel Martinez), whose sad life is on a downward spiral. He wakes up one morning bleeding from mysterious wounds on his hands, which he questions from a purely physical viewpoint, but which others see as divine signature. Hounded, Bruno flees the city and wanders through the countryside until he finds a traveling fair and falls in love. Ultimately, Bruno’s journey is one of universal ideas, which lead us to our own, larger than life questions—of love, expectation, and redemption.

“With over 100 interviews and reels upon reels of archive footage, La Pelota Vasca is an incisive documentary on Spain, ETA, and the Basque region.” - Jamie Russell, BBC Radio

This film is available for public screenings. Request a quote: info@pragda.com

With: Daniel Fanego, Arturo Goetz, Bárbara Lennie.

Enfant-terrible and multidisciplinar artist Isaki Lacuesta, author of one of the recent masterpieces of Spanish cinema, La leyenda del tiempo, always pays attentive to the mutual intoxications between reality and fiction, between fact and myth. Thought-provoking, always inspiring thriller, the film is about whether or not it’s best to remain quiet about the past. It follows an exiled activist’s return to Argentina after 30 years to search for the body of a friend who died in combat with the military in the jungle. The clandestine excavations resurface old rivalries and some well-kept secrets.

With: Candela Peña, Alberto San Juan, Cristina Marcos, Geraldine Chaplin and Antonio de la Torre.

Three siblings on the run from themselves. Martin (Alberto San Juan) wants to leave home and become a writer in Paris. Gracia (Cristina Marcos) wants to put some reality back into the fictional world that her life has become. Coral (Candela Peña) just wants to be loved. The sudden death of their father forces them to leave the inner island which isolates them from their loved ones, from their dreams … and from being themselves. A superb psicodrama by the camp filmmaker combo Dunia Ayaso and Félix Sabroso (Rated X, Sorry Darling, but Lucas Loved Me), with kick ass performances by the most renowed independent actors working today.
 

With: Nausicaa Bonnín, Eduard Fernández, Francesc Orella, Ramon Fontseré, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu

One of the most impressive Spanish debut features of the last years, Three days with the family tells the story of Léa (Nausicaa Bonnín), a 21-year-old girl who returns home to attend her grandfather’s funeral. Though Lea’s parents have long been separated, her mother reappears for the funeral to keep up appearances. Lea’s father Josep Maria, the son of deceased patriarch Pere, is a sensitive man who listens to impassioned opera but is emotionally so withdrawn that he can’t get close to his daughter. Her French mother Joelle drinks to hide her sadness. Not surprisingly, Lea’s a loner and distraught by all the family stress; on top of everything else, her boyfriend is just breaking up with her.

Often hilarious, this amusing semi-autobiographical film by 28-years-old Spanish director Mar Coll, proffers an observant study of rituals of grief in a bourgeois household where little can be aired openly and hypocrisy rules.