Eye on : Looking into Contemporary Spanish Filmmaking

The Embassy of Spain presents the second Oslo Spanish Film Festival. Hosted at Cinemateket, the festival seeks to offer viewers a taste of the creative wealth of Spanish cinema today, bringing together thriller, documentary, historical drama, animation and comedy to the screens of Oslo.

The five award-winning movies to be showcased are: No rest for the wicked (09.12.14); Map (12.12.14); 13 roses (13.12.14); A Gun in Each Hand (14.12.14); Wrinkles (15.12.14).

This is the first time these acclaimed productions will be screened in Norway and together offer a unique insight not just into recent Spanish filmic creativity, but also into contemporary Spanish society as a whole.

Fittingly, the Festival will open with No rest for the wicked, the closest to a Spanish take on Nordic Noir and certainly one of the best thrillers ever produced in Spain. The film sheds light into the darkest recesses of Spanish society during one of the toughest times of the country’s recent history, the March 11 terrorist attacks on Madrid.

Equally introspective, but looking into a completely different period of history, is 13 Roses. Set during the Spanish Civil War, this is a tightly-woven historical drama based on the real-life story of 13 young women forced to fight for their freedom after being imprisoned in the last months of the conflict. A Gun in Each Hand, meanwhile, is a wry romantic comedy that explores the limits of love and manhood in present-day Barcelona. Its mostly male line-up has a star-studded cast that includes Luis Tosar, Leonardo Sbaraglia and Argentine beau, Ricardo Darín.

Map and Wrinkles, lastly, stand as our less conventional and perhaps most compelling proposals. Map is an intimate docu-diary of a young filmmaker struck simultaneously by two crises: Spain’s recent economic downturn and his own a sentimental rupture. Wrinkles, an animated feature length for an adult audience, is the best instance of the dynamism of Spain’s animation industry, as well as a brave and emotionally-charged tableau of one of the most pressing problems of contemporary Europe: old-age.

The Festival will take place from December 9th to 15th, and in a month of heavy dining and wining it hopes to offer a refreshing and sobering alternative to the ongoing Julebord.

Entrance is free and all films will be showcased in Spanish with English subtitles.

THRILLER No Rest for the Wicked, (2011) by 114 minutes (rated over-15) Showcased: December 9th (18h)

Set in the arid landscapes of Madrid's sprawling suburbs, featuring a magnificent José Coronado as the villanous anti-hero Santos Trinidad, a good-cop gone-bad with a penchant for his own kind of justice, this action- packed film offers an insight into the darkest aspects of contemporary Spanish society. Petty corruption and social injustice crash headlong with the terrorist train bombs of March 11, 2004, as an investigation into a triple murder turns into something a lot more dangerous.

This tightly-woven feature, stole six - the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars - in 2012, including for Best Actor, Best Director and Best Film. It has won 16 other national and international awards and was nominated for Best Film at Spain's prestigious San Sebastian Film Festival. This is arguably the best thriller to come out of Spain in the past decade.

Variety Film noir and contempo Spain make a near-perfect match in the explosive “No Rest for the Wicked,” the kind of movie that gives dramas about bad cops a good name… pic is credible, fast-moving, hard-nosed fare, confirming helmer Enrique Urbizu’s reputation as one of Spain’s sharper genre helmers.

DOCUMENTARY Map, 2012, by León Siminiani 85 minutes Unrated Showcased: December 12th (18h)

This is the story of a young Spanish director burned out by his job on TV, who goes to India in search of his first feature film, only to discover that the real search was not in India but back home. Upon his return to Madrid, everything turns out the opposite from what he expected.

With this feature, director Siminiani invites viewers to join in his constant experimentation. Narrative, image and plot are turned upside down to fit the whims of a protagonist who plays out on screen his inner battles against loss, solitude and melancholy with great doses of humour and light-heartedness. A splendid, first-person road movie.

Fotogramas One of the most starkly romantic films produced recently in Spain. A sincere, shameless, unfiltered proposal that prods viewers into complicity and anger.

La Razón An agile, fun, melancholic and incredibly accessible film that opens up to viewers with the generosity of a private diary that we should all try to rewrite. Map is a good instance of a fresh and stimulating kind of Spanish cinema.

HISTORICAL DRAMA 13 Roses, 2007, by Emilio Martínez Lázaro 100 minutes Rated: over-12 Showcased: December 13th (18h)

In 1939, in the last throes of the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalist troops of Franco detained 13 young women in Madrid, accusing them of plotting against the new regime. Las 13 Rosas tells the story of these very different women and their families and the drama that ensued after their arrest. In the backdrop, a war-torn Madrid, in which propaganda and repression were taking hold of every-day life after three years of war. The film offers a fresh insight into the complexities of the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period, through the eyes of the unlikely protagonists of this kind of historic events, 13 young women who made history through their valour and suffering.

Variety Visuals are superb, with some stunning period detail in the art direction, and fine digital f/x and lensing by Jose Luis Alcaine.

COMEDY A Gun in Each Hand, 2013, by 95 minutes Rated: over-12 http://www.unapistolaencadamano.com/ Showcased: December 14th (18h)

A comic, ironic and merciless portrait of the weaknesses and traumas of a group of middle-aged, male urbanites, gathering some of the best male and female acting talent of Spain and Latin America.

The eight protagonists of the film have reached the zenith of their lives lost, confused and mostly lonely. Despite living in Barcelona, one of the world’s most beautiful cities, and being surrounded by intelligent, witty women, each of them faces their own kind of crisis, presented in a mesh of interweaving stories packed with humour, irony and pain.

Variety A witty, perceptive dissection of midlife masculine insecurities that's all about dialogue and what some fine thesps can do with it.

Urban Cinefile Spanish comi-drama that prods mercilessly at the secret lives, fantasies, emotions and sexual prowess of its eight middle-ages male protagonists.

ANIMATION Wrinkles, 2011, by Ignacio Ferreras 89 minutes Unrated Showcased: December 15th (18h)

Based on Paco Roca's comic of the same title (2008 Spanish National Comic Prize), WRINKLES is a 2D animated feature-length film for an adult audience. Wrinkles portrays the friendship between Emilio and Miguel, two aged gentlemen shut away in a care home. Recent arrival Emilio, in the early stages of Alzheimer, is helped by Miguel and colleagues to avoid ending up on the feared top floor of the care home, also known as the lost causes or "assisted" floor. Their wild plan infuses their otherwise tedious day-to-day with humor and tenderness, because although for some their lives are coming to an end, for them it is just a new beginning.

Observer A surprising thing indeed - an intelligent, entertaining, altogether unsentimental evocation of the experience of old age.

New York Daily News Heavy doses of humor and empathy, along with gorgeous hand-drawn animation, keep things from getting too morbid.

New York Times Unfolding in simple yet wonderfully expressive hand-drawn frames, the film’s unsparingly observant plot depicts the slide into senility with empathy and imagination.