The Wishful Thinkers

This is the life of dreamy filmmaker Leon, in between shooting a film and his next project – a sort of limbo with an endless postponing of things, some low-key frustration, lover’s quarrels, conversations, coffees, drunkenness, classes, concerts, and walks… But all those things are held on standby, with the particular tempo that days usually have when you simply let them pass by and the important things are yet to come.

The Wishful Thinkers is – as we’re told in its first frames – an intermission film. But apart from that, it also works as a treatise about the fine art of wandering around a big city like Madrid (portrayed in captivating black and white by Santiago Racaj) and about bohemian life, youth, and friendship. Following Every Song Is About Me, Jonás Trueba delivers here a sudden, dazzling and mature film, proving he knows the secret of filming the present, with such a powerful nostalgic drive that can instantly transform it into memories we assume as our own.