When director Marta Matute (Madrid, 1988) was 18 years old, her mother was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. For nine years, the whole family dedicated themselves to caring for their mother, and that degenerative disease became the center of their lives. For all practical purposes, Matute stopped being a normal girl her age. “I wanted to be with my friends, live my life, but the illness destroyed everything – she recalls –. In a way, you continue with your life, but dissociated.” Matute didn't talk to her friends about the situation and even hid it, but she already suspected that sooner or later she would end up “doing something” with that experience. And so it has been: I Will Not Die of Love, her opera prima, which arrives in cinemas this Friday after triumphing at the Malaga Festival with three awards (Golden Biznaga for best film, best actress, and best supporting actor) that position it as the first major surprise of Spanish cinema in 2026.

L'ascension du haut mal (1996-2003; Epileptic in the Spanish edition), one of the greatest non-fiction comics in history, turned the Frenchman Pierre-François Beauchard (Nimes, 1959), known as David B., into one of the essential names of the Nouvelle BD, the movement that completely revamped French comics during the 90s. But he is not the author of a single work but a creator with a boundless imagination, almost overwhelming, as he once again demonstrates in El señor Búho y el País de los Muertos (Salamandra), the exuberant poem about life and death that he has drawn in panels of prodigious black and white.

Like so many other children, Genís Rigol (Barcelona, 1982) grew up reading comic books, especially from the golden age of Franco-Belgian comics such as Tintin, Spirou and Marsupilami. But the moment that led him to want to draw comics came as an adult, when he discovered a comic book store in Poble-sec. “I liked to draw and I had done animations, but entering Fatbottom made me a comic author – he recalls–. I discovered the fanzines of Alexis Nolla, Pau Anglada and Marc Torices and I started making short strips. And it helped me realize that I could jump in and make comics simply as a playful act, without needing formal training. In the end, it's a technologically very simple medium: all you need is paper, a pen, and a boring afternoon. But before, I thought you had to be Franco-Belgian, at least, to make a comic.”

During his visit to Barcelona a few weeks ago to receive the BCN Film Fest Honorary Award, José Luis Garci (Madrid, 1944) met with the press, eager to talk about cinema and enjoying the peace of not having to defend any of his own films. In theory, Garci closed his filmography in 2019 with El crack cero, and he does not seem eager to direct again. “I don't feel like making movies anymore, I prefer a world without meetings –he assures–. Besides, one would have to meet with the platforms, which I don't really know what they are. When I was studying, platforms were what Bogart used to wear to be at Ingrid Bergman's height.” It's clear that Garci enjoys presenting himself as a relic of the past, but then he admits that yes, he is also subscribed to Netflix and to “all” the platforms, but “especially to Movistar+ for football and DAZN for boxing.” And he even watches series. “I got hooked on Succession and I really liked the first episode ofTrue Detective, and also The Penguin. It's incredible that they didn't give Colin Farrell the Emmy,” he says.

Patti Smith (Chicago, 1946), the American singer with an extraordinary musical career of more than five decades, also known for her literary work and political activism, has won the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, which is awarded by the Princess of Asturias Foundation and is endowed with 50,000 euros. In the arts category, the award recognizes "the work of creation, cultivation, and perfection of architecture, cinematography, dance, sculpture, photography, music, painting, theater, and other artistic manifestations." In previous editions, the award went to artists such as Joan Manuel Serrat (2024), Meryl Streep (2023), Marina Abramovich (2021), Martin Scorsese (2018), Francis Ford Coppola (2015), Richard Serra (2010), or Bob Dylan (2007).

Something is moving in the fabric of Gràcia's bookstores. In recent months, two new establishments have opened: Nocturama, in Plaça Revolució, and Pàgina 128, at Carrer Torrent de l’Olla, 177. For both, this is their first Sant Jordi in the neighborhood: Pàgina 128, specializing in children's books, has a stall in Gran de Gràcia, but Nocturama has not prepared anything special. “Today is about meeting readers and readers meeting me,” says bookseller Marina Rodríguez, who opened the shop just two weeks ago. Furthermore, on May 15, a new bookstore, Finestres Palestina, will open on Carrer Verdi. They will therefore be three additions to Barcelona's most extensive and varied bookstore network. “We are the second neighborhood with the most bookstores in Europe, only surpassed by Charing Cross in London –boasts Jordi Duarte, owner of Taifa Llibres, on Carrer Verdi–. The number fluctuates each year, but in the entire district there are usually between 36 and 38 bookstores. Each has a different model, and a network has been created where if you don't find a book in one, you'll find it in another.”

To understand what kind of film Michael is, the biopic about Michael Jackson that has just been released, one only needs to look at the credits, where John Branca and John McClain appear as main producers, the lawyers appointed as executors of Michael Jackson's post-mortem business and who have turned him into the most profitable dead celebrity in the world, with more than 3.5 billion euros generated since Jackson's death in 2009, according to Forbes. Like so many other biopics, Michael exists above all as a commercial strategy that must protect and reinforce a brand. Therefore, the margin of artistic freedom that director Antoine Fuqua (Training day, Brooklyn's Finest) or screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, Skyfall) have had is perceived as very scarce.

Dragons are fodder for pop culture. Film, series, literature, music, and comics have used dragons, stretching the limits of what this mythological creature can represent: an imposing fantastic beast, a cute little animal, an exotic creature... In fiction, the dragon is a malleable character that can be adapted to family comedy, monster movies, or epic fantasy. We chose 10 that have gone down in history.

Last year, 11.3% of the books sold for Sant Jordi were comics. Graphic novels, children's comics, classics, comics journalism, literary adaptations... the offering is numerous and diverse. And if we narrow it down to Catalan comics, there are more and more: the variety of proposals and genres is unstoppable. The festival is one of the best moments of the year to stop by a bookstore and check it out.

Willem Dafoe (Appleton, 1955), the star guest of the edition of the BCN Film Fest that kicks off this Thursday at Cinemes Verdi, attends the group of journalists with a warm smile that illuminates his angular and expressive face, one of the most fascinating in world cinema. The Host, the film by Miguel Ángel Jiménez that he presents at the festival, is a Catalan co-production with an international cast filmed in Greece in which the American actor plays a powerful Greek magnate with shady dealings who, in the mid-70s, gathers family and friends on his private island to lavishly celebrate his daughter's birthday and plan her future, whether she wants it or not. “The problem with wanting to control everything is that it ends up destroying everything you love – the actor points out. He always thinks about his past, surely because he has humble origins. But what defines him is, above all, power and the loss of his son”.

The Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto (Medellín, 1986) won the Palme d'Or for best short film at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival with the final project for the master's degree he was pursuing at the London Film School, where Carla Simón was one of his classmates. A decade later, difficulties in making his second film brought about doubts and fear. What if his initial success had been a mirage? Would he end up being just a professor, having been forced to abandon his dream of filmmaking? These concerns ended up being reflected in A Poet, a hilarious yet very bitter comedy that premieres this Friday and features a wonderful protagonist: Óscar Restrepo, a poet who won an important award at a very young age and who, now older and a failure, wallows in his life's defeat through alcohol and self-pity, lives off the pension of an elderly, ill mother, and uses his literary aspirations (“I am a poet!”) as a trench to shield himself from work. “What you are is an idler,” his sister rightly tells him, pushing him to accept a job as a literature teacher.

A list like the one from the survey on Catalan cinema among 200 experts, promoted by ARA, is not only useful for awarding or removing medals from films or directors, but also for studying and analyzing the image left by the votes. If we take the 25 most voted films as a representative sample, a first conclusion is that this canon of Catalan cinema is moving towards parity. There are nine films directed by women in the top 25 of the list, that is, 36%; but if we focus only on the films on this list produced in the last fifteen years, which are those of the great arrival of women in cinema, the percentage of female directors rises to 50%. It is worth noting that among the five most voted films there is only one directed by a woman, and among the ten most voted only three, but this imbalance at the top of the list is compensated, in part, by the significant first position ofEstiu 1993, directed by Carla Simón.

The first film as a director by actress Aina Clotet will premiere in May as part of the Semaine de la Critique, the prestigious French event that takes place parallel to the Cannes Film Festival and has been organized by the French Union of Cinema Critics since 1962. Viva, which is set in a near future marked by extreme drought, stars Clotet herself in the role of a woman who has just turned 40 and is recovering from cancer.

The first film as a director by actress Aina Clotet will premiere in May as part of the Semaine de la Critique, the prestigious French festival that takes place parallel to the Cannes Film Festival and has been organized by the French Union of Film Critics since 1962. Viva, which is set in the near future when Catalonia is suffering from an extreme drought, stars Clotet herself in the role of a woman who has just turned 40 and is recovering from cancer.

One of the most exemplary cultural projects on the Catalan film scene could come to an end on Sunday, April 19th. After 25 years, the Girona Critics Collective is about to lose the management of Cinema Truffaut, a municipal facility that will be managed by the company of exhibitor Toni Badimon, who programs the Rambla de l'Art cinemas in Cambrils. The reason for the change is the public tender called by the Girona City Council, in which Badimon's project has prevailed thanks to a higher score for the economic offer, 4,000 euros lower than that of the Critics Collective. The members of the collective have not yet made any statement, awaiting an emergency meeting with the Girona council scheduled for this Monday evening.

When the English director Kirk Jones met John Davidson to explain that he wanted to direct a film about his life, the first thing Davidson said was: “Fuck!”. But it wasn't a spontaneous invitation to fuck but one of the verbal tics that have marked his life since he was 14, when he developed Tourette's syndrome. In a matter of weeks, Davidson went from being a normal teenager with good grades and a group of friends to being marginalized at school, labeled as crazy, beaten by classmates, and on occasion, arrested by the police. His struggle to have a dignified life, relate to others, and find a job are the raw material for Incontrolable (I swear), the film inspired by Davidson, which premieres this Friday and is already one of the great successes of British cinema in the last decade, with more than a million viewers in cinemas in the United Kingdom and awards such as the Bafta for best actor for Robert Aramayo, who beat, among others, Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet.

Spanish cinema will make history at the next edition of the Cannes Film Festival, where it will have three films in the official competition: Amarga Navidad, by Pedro Almodóvar, La bola negra, by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, known as Los Javis, and El ser querido, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen. After last year's double win with films by Carla Simón and Oliver Laxe in competition, this historic trio confirms an unprecedented trend at a festival traditionally wary of Spanish cinema. Their rivals for the Palme d'Or will include, among others, new films by such established directors as Ryusuke Hamaguchi, László Nemes, Asghar Farhadi, Pawel Pawlikowski, and two directors who have already triumphed at Cannes: Hirokazu Kore-eda and Cristian Mungiu.

Spanish cinema will make history at the next edition of the Cannes Film Festival, where it will have three films in the official competition: Amarga Navidad, by Pedro Almodóvar; La bola negra, by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, known as Los Javis, and El ser querido, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen. After last year's double feature with films by Carla Simón and Oliver Laxe in competition, this historic trio confirms an unprecedented trend at a festival traditionally wary of Spanish cinema. Their rivals for the Palme d'Or will include, among others, new films by such established auteurs as Ryusuke Hamaguchi, László Nemes, Asghar Farhadi, Paweł Pawlikowski, and two directors who have already triumphed at Cannes: Hirokazu Kore-eda and Cristian Mungiu.

In 1952, the English magazine Sight & Sound asked 85 critics from around the world for their 10 favorite films in the history of cinema. 63 responded to the call and with the lists they sent, a first possible canon of cinema history was compiled, led with 25 votes by Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves. The Sight & Sound poll, repeated and expanded every ten years, has demonstrated the power of lists to create opinion, promote debate, and celebrate excellence in cinema. With this same aim, ARA has asked 200 experts what are the best Catalan films of the 21st century. The objective is to celebrate Catalan cinema of the last 25 years, but, above all, to think and debate our cinema with a playful and critical spirit.