Dearest Mother
Spain. 2009. 103 min. 35 mm. Colour. V.O. Spanish.

Director:  Pilar Távora
Script:  Santiago Escalante
Production:  Artimagen Producciones SL
Editor:  Pilar Távora
Cinematographer:  Marc Cuxart
Music:  Borja Évora, José Miguel Évora
Cast:  Ramón Rivero, Gala Evora, Jose Burgos, David Lora, Gloria de Jesús, Mª Alfonsa Rosso, Julio Vargas, Nacho Vázquez

Synopsis:

“Madre Amadísima” is a moving story about the life of Alfredo, a homosexual born in 1952. Alfredito’s conversation with the Virgin he dresses for the religious procession reveal the character’s experiences. Tenderness, marginalization, humor, love of one’s mother and of the Virgin, sexual awakening, drugs, religion, loneliness and friendship all go hand in hand, consolidating this story, common to millions of human beings throughout the world.

Il compleanno
Italy. 2009. 106 min. 35 mm. Colour. V.O. Italian.

Director:  Marco Filiberti
Script:  Marco Filiberti
Production:  Zen Zero
Producer:  Caroline Locardi, Agnes Trincal
Editor:  Valentina Girodo
Cinematographer:  Roberta Allegrini
Music:  Andrea Chenna
Cast:  Alessandro Gassman, Maria De Medeiros, Massimo Poggio, Michela Cescon, Christo Jivkov, Piera Degli Esposti, Thyago Alves, Eleonora Mazzoni, Paolo Giovannucci, Federica Sbrenna

Synopsis:

A group of friends rent a magnificent house on the beach where they are going to spend the summer together.The sudden arrival of Shary and Diego’s son, David, leads to growing tension that seems to involve everyone, but Matteo in particular, a wellestablished psychoanalyst who is married to Francesca. Leonard, the boy’s enigmatic and solitary uncle, thinks he understands the reasons for this ill ease, hidden under an increasingly thick blanket of silence. This holiday is to change everyone’s life for ever.

The Double Hour
Italy. 2009. 95 min. 35 mm. Colour. V.O. Italian.

Director:  Giuseppe Capotondi
Script:  Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, Stefano Sardo
Production:  Indigo Film, Medusa Film
Producer:  Francesca Cima, Nicola Giuliano
Editor:  Guido Notari
Cinematographer:  Tat Radcliffe
Music:  Pasquale Catalano
Cast:  Filippo Timi, Ksenia Rappoport, Antonia Truppo, Gaetano Bruno, Fausto Russo Alesi

Synopsis:

Sonia comes from Ljubljana and works as a waitress in a hotel. Guido is a former policeman and works as security guard in a villa outside the city.

They meet at a speed date event. He is a regular customer. For her, it is the first time and it shows. There are few words, but an instinctive attraction. In a few days, they learn to know each other, to open up their hearts and to disclose their wounds. They are on the brink of falling in love… when suddenly Guido dies, during a robbery at the villa where he works. Sonia is left alone to deal with a grief she cannot come to terms with, and for which some even seem to hold her responsible. As Sonia’s past resurfaces with all its skeletons, the reality around her starts to tremble to the point of collapsing. Everything begins to change, all certainties crumble and nobody is the same any longer.

Not even Sonia. But who is she really? Above all, is the man she continues to see – beyond all plausible logic - Guido, or is she out of her mind? And what will she do when she is given another chance?

Bye, Bye Shangai
Czech Republic, Argentina. 2008. 114 min. 35 mm. Colour. V.O. Spanish, Czech.

Director:  Jana Bokova
Script:  Jana Bokova
Production:  Endorfilm
Producer:  Gonzalo Rodriguez Bubis, Pablo Salomón, Jiri Konecny
Editor:  Jan Danhel
Cinematographer:  Jiri Zykmund
Music:  Peta Korman Novak
Cast:  Václav Belohradsky, Jana Bokova, Jiri Konecny, Petr Král, Vlastimil Tresnak

Synopsis:

Prague-Paris-Buenos Aires- Round trip. To leave or not to leave was their youthful dilemma.

To return or not is the decision that will close the circle of their lives. Few remember that forty years ago leaving Czechoslovakia was a crime and not leaving was a kind of silent suicide. These men and women decided to gamble their lives so as not to risk their freedom. Today they return to a country that they barely remember having left. They might return in spring but it will never be like the one in '68.

The old ideals that were crushed by bad communism are today annihilated by the savage “globalization” that hasn’t entered, as yet, with tanks, like the Russians entered in the autumn of that beautiful illusion of freedom.

Certainly their grandchildren’s history books will define the period as a brief space of time but for them it was their whole lives. What they felt and what they feel, undoubtedly only they know, but if we listened with the greatest respect and with all our sensitivity, perhaps we could understand them. It’s worth trying to understand this, their history.

The Matador
USA, Spain. 2008. 75 min. DigiBeta PAL. Colour. V.O. English, Spanish.

Director:  Stephen Higgins, Nina Gilden Seavey
Production:  City Lights Pictures
Producer:  Nina Gilden Seavey, Stephen Higgins
Editor:  Ian Rummer
Cinematographer:  Christopher Jenkins, James Morton-Haworth
Music:  John Califra
Cast:  David Fandila “El Fandi”

Synopsis:

The Matador is the epic tale of David "El Fandi" Fandila's quest to become the world's top-ranked bullfighter. Heart-wrenching setbacks and thrilling successes dramatize El Fandi's three-year journey across Spain and Latin America and into the pages of bullfighting history.

Rafael Azcona
Spain. 2009. 67 min. Digital Betacam . Colour. V.O. Spanish.

Director:  Fernando Olmeda
Script:  Fernando Olmeda
Documentalist:  Sonia Tercero
Production:  TVE Culture Channel with the collaboration of Notro TV
Producer:  Victoria Barrajón
Production director:  Óscar González M-Moro
Executive producer:  Francesc Escribano
Montaje:  Göran Gester
Cinematographer  Göran Gester
Music:  Borja Costa
Live sound:  Gustavo Aguilar

Synopsis:

The aim of the biographical documentary about Rafael Azcona is to show the key factors which define the personality of the most important script writer in Spanish cinema, the roots of his shrewd, ironic and compassionate view, the sources which inspired his talent for building characters and stories, and his specific weight as a creator in the cultural world. Filmed in Madrid, Rome and Logroño, it travels through the different stages of his life: his childhood and youth in the capital of La Rioja, his arrival in Madrid, -where he jointed the magazine “La codorniz” and published various books- and his transformation into scriptwriter at the hand of Marco Ferreri in 1958. After that, half a century of cinema and his participation in a hundred films, as well as theatre and television.

The Turtle Journey
UK, Austria, Germany. 2009. 81 min. 35 mm. Colour. V.O. English.

Director:  Nick Stringer
Script:  Mel Finn
Production:  Big Wave Productions, Film & Music Entertainment
Producer:  Sarah Cunliffe, Mike Downey, Sam Taylor
Cinematographer:  Rory McGuinness, Rick Rosenthal
Music:  Henning Lohner
Cast:  Blanca Portillo (voice), Miranda Richardson (original version's voice)

Synopsis:

A loggerhead turtle follows the path of her ancestors on one of the most extraordinary journeys in the natural world. From a beach in Florida, she rides the Gulf Stream to the frozen north, swimming around the entire North Atlantic to Africa and then back to the beach where she was born. But her chance of survival is low - just one in a thousand turtles will make it safely home.