Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal's 'Brokeback Mountain' and five other recommendations from the Americana Film Fest

BarcelonaVHS is the central theme of the 13th Americana Film Fest, which will open a window onto American indie cinema in Barcelona from March 10th to 15th. The festival, featuring 38 feature films and 20 short films screened at the Moobi Aribau, Zumzeig, Cines Girona, Cines Texas, and the Filmoteca de Catalunya, will include a retrospective dedicated to the Ross Brothers. There will also be a session at the historic Video Instan video store celebrating home video culture with a screening of the essay Videoheaven by Alex Ross Perry. We chose six titles from its program:

'The history of sound'

One of the unfathomable mysteries of recent cinema is that this romantic drama, starring two fashionable actors like Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal, was presented in competition at Cannes and hailed as a worthy heir of Brokeback Mountain...has ended without a theatrical release. While we await its arrival on streaming platforms... The history of soundAmericana offers the only possibility, in principle, of seeing this romantic tragedy on the big screen. It tells the story of two men united by their shared love of folk songs who embark on an Alan Lomax-style expedition in search of American musical folklore.

'Splitsville'

It's not the first film to try to capitalize on the complications caused by new models of non-exclusive sexual and romantic relationships – you only have to see Folichonnerías, also in the American league—but Splitsville It's definitely the most hilarious. And it is, thanks in part to the frenetic energy of the director and star, Michael Angelo Covino, but also to the wacky comedic sense of a spectacular Adria Arjona and the perfect timing Dakota Johnson's humorous take on 'Lurker' is a bumpy ride through open marriage and polyamorous relationships, with a particularly hilarious first act.

If the Safdie brothers were to direct a season ofAround It would look very similar to thedebut work Alex Russell's film best captures the most toxic and perverse dimension of the cult of fame in today's society. Lurker It follows a young man obsessed with being part of the inner circle of a rising pop star, capable of lying, manipulating, and attacking his rivals to scrape together a few crumbs of secondhand fame. Like a kind ofThe Talented Mr. Ripley For the TikTok generation, the film is gradually taking the form of a portrait of fandom like an empty shell drenched in a darkness bordering on psychopathy.

'The Baltimorons'

In a Baltimore far removed from the stories of corruption and drugs of The wire, The Baltimorerons It tells a Christmas story for fans of the series. Somebody somewhereIn other words, a kind and empathetic comedy about ordinary people and their joys and sorrows. The protagonists are an aspiring comedian who hasn't had a drink in six months and the divorced dentist who treats him in an emergency on Christmas Eve—an unlikely pair of lost souls who don't quite know what they're looking for, but do want more out of life. Jay Duplass, the director, is one of the heroes of the generation mumblecoreThat indie film movement that vanished into thin air.

'Predators'

From 2004 to 2007, a series aired on NBC. reality extremely disturbing: To catch a predator The program hired young actors to pretend to be underage and contact alleged pedophiles online. When the adult was about to meet the supposed minor, the actor would disappear and a presenter would appear, revealing the setup and interviewing the would-be abuser minutes before his arrest. With all the rigor and knowledge that the program lacked, the documentary Predators talk to the protagonists of reality and explores the social hysteria and the trail of traumas and ethical conflicts left by that problematic trap for potential perverts.

'Late fame'

Former film critic Kent Jones already proved he has a good network in his documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, which has featured Scorsese, Assayas, Fincher, Linklater, and Schrader, among others. Now, in his new fiction film, Jones has a splendid Willem Dafoe To discover the vulnerability and tenderness of a former poet who, after 30 years working at the post office, begins to be recognized as a literary genius by a small group of aspiring young writers who acclaim him for a book of poems he wrote in his youth. Inevitably, the attention of his new friends begins to destabilize a quiet life that was already heading towards retirement.