The film La bola negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, will represent Spain in the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars, as announced today by the Film Academy. The film prevailed over the other two proposals, El ser querido, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and Los domingos, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa.

The 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival opened with some juicy statements in which American director Maggie Gyllenhaal –in charge of presiding over the Official Section jury– expressed her discomfort at the scarce presence of films directed by women in the competition for the Golden Lion. "We have finally discovered that women simply make worse films than men," quipped the director of The Bride! and The Lost Daughter with irony at the opening press conference. And it must be said that, before the start of the Festival, the landscape was bleak. Of the twenty-two films in the Official Competition, only two had a woman at the helm, and Kvinde ukendt (Woman unknown), by Danish filmmaker May el-Toukhy, was the only one directed solo by a woman –the other case was the documentary Naza, co-directed by Israeli Rachel Szor alongside Yuval Abraham–. Well, what began as a fair complaint has ended in a full-blown vindication, since the jury presided over by Gyllenhaal decided to award the Golden Lion to Kvinde ukendt, a film that portrays the harsh life odyssey of a woman who tries to rebuild her life in Denmark after the Second World War, when the Nordic nation was trying to clean up its image by brutally persecuting those who had collaborated with the Nazi regime.

The Venice Film Festival dressed up this Saturday and enthusiastically applauded the return of Nanni Moretti, one of the great Italian filmmakers of the last few decades. It had been thirty-seven years since the director of Caro diario had stepped onto the historic stage, since 1989 when his film Palombella rossa –which offered an acidic portrait of the bewilderment of the Italian left– was excluded from the Official Selection supposedly for political reasons; the film ended up being presented in a secondary section of the festival, the Critics' Week. However, Moretti has not shown any resentment during the presentation of Succederà questa notte, which is competing for the Golden Lion this year. In fact, the filmmaker wanted to downplay his almost four-decade distancing from the festival: “It is not true that I had anything against Venice; simply, in all this time, my films were never ready in the summer, which is when the festival is held. This time, instead of filming in the spring, I did it in the autumn and, therefore, it seemed natural to present the film there”.

Last week I went to see Sorogoyen's new film, El ser querido, starring Javier Bardem and Vicky Luengo, which is about a renowned and controversial film director who calls his daughter, an actress with a stalled career who earns her living working as a waitress and with whom he has no contact, to offer her a role in the new film he wants to shoot in the Sahara. It seems that when Valor sentimental, by Joachim Trier, was released last year, Sorogoyen's blood ran cold: the film, winner of the Cannes Jury Grand Prix, is about a renowned film director, Gustav Borg, played by Stellan Skarsgård, who offers a role to his daughter Nora, with whom he has no relationship, for his new film project. I understand the fear.I will not write an article comparing both films, nor will I try to critique them; I just want to reflect on the fact that unites both titles in a more meaningful way. And forgive the spoiler, because one must start at the end: both Sorogoyen and Trier redeem the absent father. I mean: at the end of both films, repentant, sentimental, moved, and even shocked fathers appear to see their daughters there, acting so well, having turned that crazy project of filming together into a second chance that life has offered them. Both fathers are saved.Leaving the cinema, the first thing I thought about was what would have happened if instead of fathers they had been mothers. This was already explained very well by Begoña Gómez Urzaiz in Las abandonadoras: while an absent father who sees his children a couple of times a year and pays child support more or less regularly can come to be seen as a good parent, a mother who does the same is almost a criminal. How could a woman want to abandon her child? What kind of monstrosity is this? Maria Montessori, Joni Mitchell, Ingrid Bergman and so many others. The most interesting thing is that Gómez Urzaiz also reviews fictional mothers, such as Anna Karenina, Nora from A Doll's House or Carol by Patricia Highsmith, tracing a cultural archive of how we have imagined the mother who disappears. There is no redemption for Karenina, with her tragic suicide at the end. And as for Nora, with that final slam of the door, we applaud her for freeing herself without stopping ourselves from judging her. And faced with Carol, Gómez Urzaiz asks herself, with sincerity, how a mother can do that to her children.

One of the great names in Catalan cinema and theater, Francesc Garrido, died this Sunday night at the age of 56, as confirmed by the actor's circle to ARA. Garrido was known for his roles in films such as Smoking room, Mar adentro and Balandrau, vent salvatge, and series such as La sala, Vida privada and Jaguar. He also had a solid theater career, with notable performances in productions such as Àlex Rigola's a propòsit d'The Master and Margarita, by Bulgakov; The Video Nobody Sees, by Martin Crimp, under the direction of Carme Portaceli; The Alchemist, the adaptation that Michael De Cock made of Opus nigrum by Marguerite Yourcenar, as well as participating in different works by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Ibsen.

There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until the lockdown I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) nor Pretty woman. I have wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to efficiently fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual supply and absolute channel atomization, I cure my FOMO retrospectively. And after seeing for the first timeBen-hur, Blade runner,E.T.,A very legal redhead,Terminator,Dancing with Wolves and Alien (and alsoThe Odyssey of Nolan, bonus track of current events), I close this series with a classic of the proportions of Smiles and tears, a fresh movie from 1965:

There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until confinement I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) nor Pretty woman. I wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to effectively fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual supply and absolute atomization of channels, I cure my FOMO in deferment. This week I saw Alien for the first time and these are my notes:

There are many movies that I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until the lockdown I hadn't seen Dirty Dancing (what a marvel) nor Pretty Woman. I wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to efficiently fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual offering and absolute atomization of channels, I cure my FOMO in deferred. This week I saw Dances with Wolves for the first time and these are my notes:

There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until confinement I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) nor Pretty woman. I wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to efficiently fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual supply and absolute atomization of channels, I cure my FOMO on deferral. This week I saw Terminator for the first time and these are my notes:

There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until the lockdown I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) or Pretty woman. I wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to effectively fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual supply and absolute atomization of channels, I cure my FOMO with a delay. Ben-hur, Blade runner or E.T. Let's follow my summer journey to fill my cinematic gaps. I saw Legally Blonde for the first time and here are my notes (taken with a pen with a pompom):

There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until confinement I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) nor Pretty woman. I wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to effectively fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual supply and absolute atomization of channels, I cure my FOMO in deferred. This week I saw E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the first time and these are my notes:

In the last edition of the Oscars, the award for best documentary film was won by Mr. Nobody against Putin. The impact of the story of this high school teacher in deep Russia overshadowed another splendid documentary, nominated in the same category, which Movistar+ has just premiered: Cutting through rocks, directed by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni. You must get to know its protagonist, Sara Shahverdi. She will fascinate you with her personality and drive. Sara becomes the first woman elected councilor in her rural village in northwestern Iran. She is a midwife, an activist for women's rights, and a tireless worker. The documentary begins by showing how, all by herself, she fixes a large iron door using an angle grinder. She also uses the trunk of a tree to level the doorframe and make the lock fit. The determination with which she will solve this problem will be maintained throughout the film. Shahverdi never stops: she advises women to claim their inheritance rights, coordinates village improvement works, gives talks at schools to encourage girls to continue studying, cares for her mother, fixes breakdowns, repairs her motorcycle... Even the viewer perceives a certain sensation of physical exhaustion just by seeing the energy she puts into improving the lives of others. The documentary is imbued with her strength.

Just as it happened with the summer of Barbie and Oppenheimer, when a couple of films become a mass phenomenon, one cannot resist the temptation to interpret them as a symptom of collective unease. Even more so when we talk about horror cinema: the more it hits the nail on the head in exposing a hidden malaise, the scarier the film will be and, therefore, the more successful it will be. That's why it has always been said that every horror genre is born from social unease: vampire films represent the fear that the rich will suck our resources, zombie films confront us with the impossibility of controlling the masses, haunted house stories exploit the dark side of the nuclear family, and so on. Well, with Obsession and Backrooms, two horror films made by very young directors that in recent weeks have broken all kinds of box office records and have dragged crowds of young people, whom cinema had given up for lost, to theaters, we can say that a new generation is beginning to put a face to its monsters.Although they are very different films, I think both should be read uninhibitedly as an expression of the unease that digital natives feel when relating to the real world in screen time, and that if they have been so successful among young people it is because they have managed to incorporate the anxieties of the internet into the medium of cinema. In other words, neither of the two films explicitly deals with the theme of adolescents hooked on the algorithm with the alarmist tone of a Sense ficció, but rather incorporates the anxieties into the texture of the artistic artifact, achieving that strange privilege that allows metaphors to reach places impossible for explicit language.

The essential and beloved Àlex Gutiérrez explained, to the Stop..., that there is a boycott campaignagainst the adaptation of the'Odyssey by Christopher Nolan because Helen of Troy will be played by a black actress, Lupita Nyong’o. We have seen the series The Bridgertons, set in the 19th century, featuring actors of different races playing high society characters, during a period when this was not the case. The series features excellent actors from all over the world, allowing for sales on five continents. We have seen Hamlets starring women, which is a much more substantial change than race.

There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until confinement I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) nor Pretty woman. I wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to effectively fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual supply and absolute atomization of channels, I cure my FOMO in deferred. This week I saw Blade runner for the first time.

There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until confinement I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) or, incredibly, Pretty woman. For someone born in 1990, turning thirty and never having seen Pretty woman is like saying you've never heard La Bomba, or like having crossed the square firmly in the middle of a water fight and having completely dry clothes. Well, it's possible. Pretty Woman! I like the triangle it traces with the universal Cinderella story and how Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957) is its dark, fatal, bitter version. And yet, with a ending that illuminates the spirit with the force of a thousand suns.

The Tarragona-based filmmaker Anna M. Bofarull premiered on June 11 at the International Catalan Film Festival (FIC-CAT) in Roda de Berà her latest film, Rebel, a documentary with the 1-O referendum as a backdrop and starring Marta Torrecillas. Torrecillas was one of those attacked by the Spanish police, and images of her being dragged by officers down the stairs of the Pau Claris institute in Barcelona went viral, along with her claim that her fingers on one hand had been broken one by one.

I don't know if it happens to you too, but I have the feeling that, lately, there is a worrying lack of empathy. It's as if we see the people around us, but we don't really look at them. We go so fast that, too often, we forget that everyone carries their own baggage.

Last week, actors Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci jointly received their respective stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The fact that they did the ceremony together is not only because they are co-stars in The Devil Wears Prada 2, but also for a second reason: they are technically family thanks to a love story that originated at the premiere of the original film. This is because in 2012, Blunt and Tucci became in-laws.

“There is a man in Spain who does it all”, sing Astrud in the opening credits of the documentary The Man Who Designed Spain, which premieres on Filmin this Fridaypremieres on Filmin. The lyrics fit the film's protagonist, José María Cruz Novillo, perfectly, who during the 70s and 80s renewed the iconographic imagery of post-Franco Spain. He was the creator of the logos for PSOE, Correos, Renfe, Repsol, Endesa, the newspaper El Mundo, Cope, the Community of Madrid, and even the peseta banknotes launched in 1978 and the blue of the National Police uniforms. But the most surprising thing is not that one man signed all this – and much more – but that most of it continues in use decades later, resisting the fads and trends of an ever-changing society. It is the most compelling proof of modernity: becoming a classic.