San Sebastián applauds the religious drama 'Los domingos', the top favorite at the Golden Shell.

BarcelonaIn his first film, Five little wolves, and in the series that premiered last year, Fly, Basque filmmaker Alauda Ruiz de Azúa touched on burning issues (the critical examination of motherhood, gender violence) that demonstrated her ability to engage with current societal concerns through film. But in the Catalan co-production Sundays It addresses an issue that is not part of the public debate, and in a way that moves away from the conventions of social cinema, which is often more concerned with conveying an ideological position than exploring the complexity and contradictions of reality.

That's why the film's standing ovation at its presentation at the San Sebastian Film Festival on Monday is so commendable—and bodes well for a place of honor in the awards list: Sundays, where conflict erupts within a Basque family when the teenage daughter announces she wants to become a nun and enter a cloistered convent, is not an easy film, and may upset viewers looking for a clear and forceful discourse in line with their opinions or beliefs. Perhaps Ruiz de Azúa's merit lies in making an uncomfortable film that doesn't present solutions but rather difficult questions.

Sundays places the core of the family conflict between the religious vocation of a 17-year-old girl (debutante Blanca Soroa), marked by the absence of a mother who died prematurely, and the secular outlook of an aunt (Patricia López Arnaiz, extraordinary), who, faced with the indifference of a son more concerned with his debts than with the choice of his weapons, are more or less ethical.

Ruiz de Azúa's writing is restrained and without underlining, allowing all the key characters to express their points of view. In a way, the film becomes a search for the truth, both for the teenager who questions the depth of his calling and for a viewer confronted with his own prejudices. And in a formal key, Ruiz de Azúa has reviewed the aesthetics and lighting (pay attention to the photography by Bet Rourich) of the spiritual cinema of Dreyer and Bresson to shape a staging that incorporates powerful ideas: the use of a choral version of the song Into my arms by Nick Cave which helps to establish the analogy between spiritual and carnal love, and the high tension dialectical duel between the aunt and a mother superior very well played by Nagore Aramburu of Want.

Although the dramatic force of the end of Sundays Perhaps it wasn't necessary—the punishment of one of the characters seems excessive—we must acknowledge the uniqueness of a film that, without renouncing the naturalism of the new Spanish cinema directed by women, constructs stories from a feminine perspective that go beyond ideological and emotional identification. Moral ambiguity and stories that open debate and stir convictions are welcome, although this same ambivalence can be used (indeed) to exploit the film from conservative positions.

Kafka Beyond the Kafkaesque

"For every word Kafka wrote, there are a million words written about him," says the guide to a museum dedicated to the eccentric Czech writer. biopic that Agnieszka Holland has directed about the author of The metamorphosisThe Polish director understands that Kafka has become a way of understanding reality and, therefore, approaches his figure through a narrative fragmented in time, sound, and image, with flashbacks to the present and a great narrative expressiveness. Overcoming the (inevitable) simplification that the Kafkaesque adjective has led to, Holland creates a film that is overwhelming and multifaceted, but also exhausting in its accumulation of ideas and narrative resources.