The cinema with the fewest empty seats in Catalonia

GironaThe Truffaut Cinema in Girona is experiencing a sweet moment. With its two screening rooms, on the top floor of the old El Modern building, during the year 2024, nearly 44,000 spectators have passed through. This is the highest figure in its history and represents 13% more than the previous year, which had also been a record. At a time when large movie theaters are struggling, the Truffaut is still in top form: it is the only one left in the city center and, with a programming of auteur films, always in their original version, it has managed to attract an increasingly large, diverse and loyal film-going public. Opened in 1992, the Truffaut is a public facility, like the Municipal Theater and the Auditorium, but in this case it is managed, altruistically, by a group of critics who are responsible for making the selection of the program with great care and good judgment.

"It's noticeable that we have more and more people, and the older spectators, who have been coming since we started, also notice it and remind us that in the four o'clock sessions we were just a few people and now we are 50," says Carles Ribas, director of the Truffaut technical team. These good audiences are not a flash in the pan, but, as Francesc Vilallonga, a member of the critics' group, explains, the result of more than 30 years of work: "You have to build the audience very progressively and the way is to have a clear line, not to move, not to confuse, to have a recognizable brand that identifies you," he says. And in the case of the Truffaut, this sign of identity is counted on by a very well thought-out selection of independent films, complemented by a good family program, cycles of classic films and, responding to the vocation of public service, also special screenings related to different entities or associations of the city.

The members of the collective, in addition to visiting the most important festivals and knowing first-hand which are the most interesting films, also have good contacts that allow them to organize presentations and discussions with professionals in the sector. In addition to regular Catalan authors, such as Isaki Lacuesta, Albert Serra and Carla Simón, over the years the Truffaut has also hosted very renowned international artists such as Isabelle Huppert, Theo Angelopoulos, Patrice Chéreau, Jorge Semprún and Edgar Morin, among many others.

A cinema with a vocation for public service

In terms of its public aspect, with a concession to a group of volunteer experts, the Truffaut represents a unique and absolutely pioneering case in Catalonia. Many other facilities have asked for advice and have tried to copy the model, with differences depending on each case, such as the CineCiutat in Palma, in Mallorca, and the CineBaix in Sant Feliu de Llobregat. In the Catalan capital there is the paradigmatic case of the Filmoteca de Catalunya, which is a public company, and in fact the Truffaut, since 2002, has been a decentralised sub-office. Thanks to this agreement with the Filmoteca, for example, every Monday in the Girona cinema there are cycles of classic filmmakers, with a very good reception, such as those of Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock or, currently, Akira Kurosawa. In addition, the intention of both institutions is to strengthen the link and, for example, encourage the most renowned directors who visit the Filmoteca to also come to Girona.

An excellent harvest of auteur cinema in Catalan

Beyond the virtues of the project, the good figures of the Truffaut are also explained, evidently, by the quality of the releases of auteur films and, specifically, Catalan-language films, which have had a number of very good years. In fact, 7 of the 10 most-watched films in the history of the Truffaut have been released in the last three years: "Repeating the releases we have seen this 2024 is very complicated, with films that have worked very well, such as House on Fire, The 47 or author titles such as Perfect days, by Wim Wenders; Poor creatures, of Lanthimos, and We will always have tomorrow, of Paola Cortellesi", explains Vilallonga.

And we must add the crisis of the blockbusters Hollywood, which in recent years have failed to hook audiences with successful productions, causing the multiplexes, which live off the success of mass cinema, to lose viewers. Like the Albéniz, which closed in the summer of 2022 and have surely taken away competition from the Truffaut, although it is true that they did not offer exactly the same proposal. "Perhaps we have absorbed part of the public, but in any case we have attracted them without changing our model, it is the new public that has adapted to our offer," argues Vilallonga.

In 2022, precisely to respond to the progressive growth of the public, the Truffaut opened a second, smaller room for around fifty spectators, which allows for more titles and schedules to be combined simultaneously with the main one, which can accommodate more than 150 people. This week, starting on Friday, both rooms will be open to viewing I'm still here, by Brazilian director Walter Salles, one of the surprises of the year, with two Oscar nominations. And on March 7th it will arrive Afternoons of solitude, Albert Serra's documentary on bullfighting, which is set to be one of the most watched of the year.