VIFF is happy to be working with Iberoamerican Images and AJA Entertainment again to co-present the fourth edition of the New Spanish Cinema festival after a lengthy hiatus.

Unless your name is Almodovar, few Spanish filmmakers see their work distributed in North America. Even the legendary master Victor Erice has yet to secure a deal for his first film in over 30 years, Close Your Eyes. This weekend is a chance to rectify this situation.

Along with Close Your Eyes and Erice’s 1973 classic, Spirit of the Beehive, we have The Candidate, a political thriller by Rodrigo Soroyen, director of The Beasts; David Martin de los Santos’s That Was Life starring veteran actress Petra Martinez; Memories of My Father, by Fernando Trueba (Chico & Rita); and our opening night film, Wild Flowers, by Jaime Rosales. With the exception of Spirit of the Beehive, all these films are Vancouver premieres.

Wild Flowers

Girasoles Silvestres

Jaime Rosales, Spain, 2022 , 107 min

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Anna Castillo (also in That Was Life) is dazzling in this powerful drama about the struggles of a young mother to transcend her testing circumstances. Julia is 22, with two kids, an estranged partner, little in the way of an education, and hanging onto the dream of becoming a nurse. She falls in love with Oscar (Oriol Pla), but we can see, even if Julia cannot, he’s hardly ideal father material… This is a character piece, piercingly authentic and sometimes bruising, but ultimately empowering.

Opening Night
Enjoy live flamenco, a glass of wine, tapas and Serrano ham, courtesy of Paella guys, Arc Imports, Antonio Romero, CRE, Spanish Society in BC and Bodega on Main

Tickets: $30

Book Tickets

Friday January 05, 7:00 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now
Monday January 08,  3:00 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now

Close Your Eyes

Cerrar Los Ojos

Victor Erice, Spain, 2023 , 169 min

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Spain’s greatest living filmmaker returns with his first feature in 31 years. This is a deeply personal movie, in part about a life devoted to cinema, but also about getting old, kinship, loss and memory. 20 years after the film he was directing fell apart when the leading man (José Coronado) disappeared, Miguel (Manolo Solo) agrees to reopen the mystery for a TV show… He needs the money, and he’s ready for a reckon- ing. Nearly three hours in length this is a ruminative and melancholy
late-career masterpiece.

Book Tickets

Saturday January 06, 2:30 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now
Monday January 08, 7:20 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now

That Was Life

La Vida era eso

David Martín de los Santos, Spain, 2023 , 109 min

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Veteran Spanish actress Petra Martínez (Bad Education) won the Best Actress award at the Seville Film Festival for her role here, as Maria, 70-something, convalescing numbly in a Belgian hospital after a heart attack. It’s here she meets another Spanish immigrant, the young and vivacious Verónica (Anna Castillo), who is here for tests after fainting in the street. Something in Verónica wakes Maria out of her stupor, and leaving a note for her husband to water the plants, she sets off for Andalucia ostensibly on a quest to track down the young woman’s family. In truth, it will be a journey of self-discovery.

Book Tickets

Saturday January 06, 5:50 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now
Sunday January 07, 1:00 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now

The Candidate

El Reino

Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Spain, 2023 , 131 min

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From the director of last year’s hit, The Beasts, this is a gripping political thriller about a rising regional politician (played with hardbitten angst by Antonio del la Torre) who comes to the unpleasant realization that he’s being hung out to dry by his universally corrupt colleagues. Manuel may be every bit as guilty as the rest of them, but he doesn’t see why he should take the fall — and sets about securing evidence to bring the whole house down.

Nominated for 13 Goya Awards in 2019, it won seven, including Best Director, Original Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor (Luis Zahera).

Book Tickets

Saturday January 06, 8:10 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now
Sunday January 07, 5:40 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now

The Spirit of the Beehive

El espiritu de la Colmena

Victor Erice, Spain, 1973 , 98 min

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Not only recognized as one of the key films in Spanish film history, but also one of the most beguiling films about childhood in all world cinema, Victor Erice’s 1973 debut feature is set in a Castilian village in 1940. Six-year-old Ana (Ana Torrent) and her older sister live with their parents, attending school, exploring the woods, and, one fateful evening, attending a traveling movie show of James Whale’s Frankenstein. Ana is touched and also perplexed by the film, and the lessons she takes away with her prove consequential.

A tapestry of sound and images, Spirit of the Beehive distills not just a specific time and place, but lived experience.

Erice’s latest film, Close Your Eyes, also screens in our New Spanish Cinema program.

Book Tickets

Sunday January 07, 3:30 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now
Monday January 08, 5:15 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now

Memories of My Father

El olvido que seremos

Fernando Trueba, Spain, 2020 , 137 min

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Leading Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba (Chico & RitaThey Shot the Piano PlayerThe Artist and the Model) tackles the acclaimed memoir by Héctor Abad Faciolince (Forgotten We’ll Be) about his relationship with his father, Colombian medical practitioner, professor and human rights activist Héctor Abad Gómez, played by the immensely sympathetic Spanish actor Javier Cámara (Talk to HerLiving Is Easy With Eyes Closed).

Gomez’s insistence on what he identifies as the five basic human rights (air; water; food; shelter and affection) makes him a popular figure on the streets of Medellín, but less so with the right wing authorities who set out to harass him and suppress his influence at every turn. His son’s admiration is only tempered by the personal cost the activist must pay for his convictions.

“This is a wonderfully sympathetic, deeply felt and tenderly funny family drama with a novelistic attention to detail." Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Best Ibero-American Film (Goya Awards) 

Book Tickets

Sunday January 07, 8:15 pm, VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre  Book Now