A few weeks ago I heard a conversation with Jordi Puntí, in which he talked about his novel Confetti, about the life of Xavier Cugat (Proa). At one point, Puntí says that "or"A writer is a liar par excellence," because fiction creates plausible worlds that are not real.

I have seen Icarus: The Week in FlamesThe pro-Spanish documentary about the October 2019 protests in Barcelona has sparked outrage (a real firestorm on Twitter) from some fervent patriots who have called for a boycott of the Filmin platform, which is offering it until the 31st of this month. The documentary in question is so inept and laughable, so crude and tacky, that it's hard to believe anyone could be offended by such nonsense. Within Filmin's extensive and splendid catalog (a godsend for anyone who loves cinema, which I have no intention of giving up for anything, least of all for any patriotic appeal), Icarus: The Week in Flames It would fit, if at all, in the section dedicated to the most extravagant and outlandish B-movies, alongside the hilarious Troma productions and horror films with ketchup blood. The Trial of the Process, with Magistrate Marchena presiding over a blatantly dysfunctional court, was the cause of the Urquinaona riot, and it also marked the point at which the state's dirty secrets overflowed, still tainting everything today. But that's one thing, and quite another is a documentary that seems written and directed by the characters in... Martínez, the fascistI have no idea what this is doing among Filmin's releases this week, but given the platform's track record, I refuse to give it any more importance. In any case, read on. Mònica Planas's criticism of the pieceAnd you will find – as always – a sound analysis.

At first glance,Icarus: The Week in FlamesIt is a police whitewashing pamphlet that seems intended to be shown in schools and classrooms, to see if it awakens vocations and serves to recruit young people for the riot police of the National Police."I relearned why I lift this uniform""An excited agent says at the end. Perhaps she is the same agent who signs the Spanish flag with which the documentary begins and ends, with phrases like..."I too defended the unity of Spain.". But Icarus It's more than a pamphlet, of course.

Filmin's editorial director, Jaume Ripoll, has reported that the platform's headquarters in Barcelona was vandalized with graffiti reading "Collaborators with Spanish repression." The message refers to the inclusion of the documentary in their catalog. Icarus: The Week in FlamesThe report, compiled from testimonies of police officers who participated in the violent repression of the 2019 protests against the sentences handed down in the Catalan independence trial, bears the signature NS!*X, which stands for Nosotros Solos (We Alone). This is the same group that takes its name from a nationalist organization from the 1930s and which this summer carried out a similar act against an ice cream shop in the Gràcia neighborhood that refused to serve customers in Catalan. On their Instagram profile, they describe themselves as "young nationalists from the Catalan Countries born from the spirit of 2019." The message's appearance comes after the controversy erupted on social media. Ripoll had responded with a statement attempting to justify his decision: "At Filmin, we are very aware that the events of October 2019 are still an open wound for Catalan society. Therefore, we understand the unease and criticism it has generated. [...] We are a Barcelona-based company, founded in 2007, and our audience is drawn from circles of friends and work environments." The statement provoked numerous critical messages from people linked to the independence movement, such as Antonio Baños, former leader of the CUP party, and Joan Maria Piqué, press officer for Carles Puigdemont when he was President of the Generalitat. Regarding the documentary in question, Ripoll admitted that it "offers a specific, first-hand perspective" and that, therefore, "like any work, it has a point of view and does not pretend to encompass the full complexity of what happened." He emphasized: "Programming a film on Filmin does not equate to endorsing its approach." The platform also emphasized that they have neither produced nor distributed the garment, but rather that it has only been added "for a limited time" to the catalog and will no longer be available on January 31.

Two years ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the documentary Twenty days in MariupolFrom reporter Mstyslav Chernov of the Associated Press. Along with photographer Evgeny Maloletka, they withstood twenty days in this Ukrainian city during the terrible siege by the Russian army. They were the only journalists who documented that hell so the world could see the stark reality of that war. Two years later, the conflict continues, and Chernov updates the cruelty of the conflict, showing the devastation, exhaustion, and despair after so much time. 2000 meters to AndriivkaIn the documentary, available on Filmin, the reporter embeds himself in the Ukrainian army's third brigade as they attempt to recapture the city of Andriivka. They only have to cover two thousand meters: a very narrow strip of forest situated between two minefields. It's the only path and it's essential because it will allow them to cut the road that, until now, has been transporting supplies to the Russian army. It will take them three months to complete it, at a very high cost in lives.

It's unusual for a series, beyond simply telling a story, to challenge the viewer regarding the conventions it uses to tell it. This is the case with... MeetingA magnificent BBC drama that you can find on Filmin. It's a thriller A five-episode series set in an everyday context. Daniel Brennan, a deaf father, is released from prison after serving time for the murder of a close friend, a teacher who worked to promote the inclusion of deaf people. No one knows the reasons that led to this tragic situation. Brennan tries to rebuild his relationship with his daughter, but the rejection he faces from those around him forces him to confront a past that haunts him.

The writer and journalist Leonor Paqué (Vizcaya, 1963) turned her Renault Clio into a mobile refuge for herself, her brother Diego, and their dog Tinta, traveling 20,000 kilometers across Spain. "I wanted to meet other victims of pedophilia. I had a desire to know who they were, what they were like as adults, and what their lives were like," explains Paqué, who was abused by a priest in the early seventies, when she was only eight years old, at the Santa Marina Children's Hospital in Bilbao, where she was hospitalized. With virtually no resources, she and her brother, the flamenco singer-songwriter Diego Paqué, recorded the interviews and have made a documentary that can be seen on Filmin. Sister Leonor. 20,000 km of confession

A year ago, Joan Dausà fulfilled his madness and made his dream come true. He managed to fill the Palau Sant Jordi with more than 16,000 people and the Palacio Vistalegre in Madrid with more than 11,000 spectators. Legends like Joan Manel Serrat and Lluís Llach are among the few soloists to have filled the Sant Jordi with Catalan. This October 28th, a documentary about the Catalan musician born in Sant Feliu de Llobregat premieres on Filmin. It reviews his story and explains what it was like to fill these two great venues.

Mark Gatiss, co-creator of the popular Sherlock, is a true devotee of detective fiction, and this is evident in his latest television adventure, Bookish, a British series about a unique investigator that premieres this Tuesday on Filmin and will please fans of period pieces and books. Beyond writing it, Gatiss also stars in it: he plays Gabriel Book, the owner of a secondhand bookstore in 1946 London. Aside from his work, Book has a hobby that takes up almost more of his time than selling books: with the complicity of his wife, he helps the police solve crimes. According to Gatiss, the bookstore setting functions as a kind of "analog computer." "The answer to the mystery is there, somewhere," the creator explained to the series' director. Guardian.

The most disturbing stories are those that most closely resemble reality, and that's what it aims to show. At the beginning of this story, everything seems normal: Martyn and Rebecca's family begin a new life far from London, in a splendid house in Glasgow. But after meeting Jan, the neighbor who lives in the basement, what seemed like a new beginning will be tinged with darkness. On October 14th, a new thriller A psychological thriller based on true events and directed by Justin Chudwick, the plot shows how a seemingly harmless, even friendly, person ends up becoming obsessed with this newly arrived family.

In a time and world dominated by algorithms and the pathological desire to accumulate money, a time that generates a word as frightening as monetizeThe awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the Hungarian László Krasznahorkai has pleased those who still want—we still want—to believe in literature as a place of resistance. Resistance against what or whom, you might ask? Well, resistance against charlatans and charlatans. Against cynics, impostors, opportunists. Of course, against authoritarians and champions of false freedoms.

I have seen, and I recommend, the documentary Goodbye, savages, which is being offered to Filmin. It's the story of a couple—she, Norwegian; he, English—who decide to live far from the city, in direct contact with wild nature, on an isolated farm. The couple has three sons and a daughter from a previous relationship. The mother, a photographer, documents family life in a diary full of images.

In times like these, is it possible to imagine ways of doing politics and leadership styles that do not only seek confrontation, pointing the finger at the adversary, or seeking audiences based on who says the loudest? We are at a juncture in which the complexity and gravity of the problems we face would seem to demand leadership and ideas that are up to the challenge, but, instead, simplification and bullyingAnd we have examples both far away and very close. All of this came to mind while watching Andrea Segre's film. The great ambition, which after a huge success in Italy, has been brought here by Filmin. The film features the great entanglements of Italian politics in the 1970s, starring Enrico Berlinguer, then Secretary General of the Italian Communist Party, but also featuring Aldo Moro, the Christian Democrat leader who was ultimately assassinated by the Red Brigades in 1978.Catalan Encyclopedia Enrico Berlinguer is often described as a politician born in Sàsser, Sardinia, to a family distantly related to Catalonia. There has been speculation about the connection between the surname Berlinguer and that of Berenguer, just as some recall that the bus that ran from Sàsser to Alghero was called La Freccia Catalana. But the truth is that the greatest mark that Enrico Berlinguer left in Catalonia is not determined by his origins, but by his enormous political influence in the configuration and political thinking of what, throughout the Franco regime, was the main party against the dictatorship, the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC). This influence was especially evident in the 1970s, in the final moments of Franco's regime and in the midst of the political transition to democracy. Berlinguer's transformation of the Italian Communist Party had a great impact on the PSUC, where people like Jordi Solé Tura had stood out by translating the works of Antonio Gramsci and who had always preferred the Italian communist tradition to the French one, more present in Santiago Carrillo's PCE.

His landscapes are more autumnal than summery, but this matters little to fans of Shetland, which has a new season of the series available on Filmin starting this Tuesday. The detective fiction series set on the Scottish island is a favorite among subscribers of the Catalan platform and, in fact, in 2024 was the most-watched season on the streaming service. The plot of the new season centers on the disappearance of Annie Bett, Detective Tosh's friend, and her son Noah. The investigation, led by Tosh herself and her superior, Detective Inspector Ruth Calder, will uncover family and personal secrets within the Shetland community.

Wong Kar-wai was allowed to do a seriesWe're talking about one of the contemporary filmmakers who excels most in melodrama, and a creator who likes to expand his stories, which often expand across different spatial and temporal dimensions, as in great serials. He also does this in Blossoms Shanghai, his debut in television fiction, with a narrative around the turn towards capitalism of Chinese society, represented in the meteoric rise of Ah Bao (Hu Ge), a young man who becomes rich when the Shanghai stock exchange opens and becomes the most charismatic figure in the city. Based on the novel by Jin Yucheng, Wong follows the brutal transformations that contemporary China has undergone, in a series of 30 episodes (15 accessible to the press) that once again highlights the genius of the director of Happy together when it comes to recreating the history of an era down to the smallest detail, from objects to all kinds of dishes, from the most popular (beef chow fun) to the most extravagant (food fans will enjoy the episodes in which a culinary war breaks out between rival establishments).

In procedural series—those that follow the investigation of a crime—there is a variant that moves away from the stereotypical image of the tortured police officer: crime mysteries starring women. In recent weeks, several options have emerged that opt for this formula. We review the most recent premieres featuring female investigators who, like their male colleagues, also suffer from trauma and have unique characteristics that make them special. A list that could also include the Basque series Missing.

Comedian and screenwriter Jack Rooke (United Kingdom, 1993) has had to deal with loss and grief on several occasions throughout his still short life. First, with the death of his father and then with the suicide of one of his best friends from university. Both experiences are captured in Big boys, one of the UK's most tender and luminous comedies which has just premiered its latest season on Filmin. Taking advantage of his first visit to Barcelona to attend Primavera Sound, Rooke, affable and excited by the series' reception in Spain, talks to ARA about mental health, comedy, and the inconsistencies of the British who voted for Brexit.

As the main window for European television fiction, Filmin brings audiences small gems that would have a difficult fit on more generalist and commercial platforms. This is the case of Soviet jeans, the Catalan streaming service's big premiere this February, a Latvian comedy-drama set in the Cold War years that arrives with the backing of having won the audience award at the main European series festival, Series Mania. It is not the only award it took home in its passage through the contest: its protagonist, Karlis Arnolds Avots, won the award for best actor in the International Panorama category.

It was the most watched series of 2024 on Filmin and this Tuesday it returns with a new season. Shetland, set on the remote Scottish islands of the same name, fascinated the platform's viewers with the story of Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall), a widowed police detective who was in charge of investigating criminal cases while trying to raise his stepdaughter and overcome the grief over the death of his wife. Endorsed by the BBC seal - it is one of the great classics of British public television - the series has undergone a transformation in the last two instalments that have already been seen in England: Jimmy Perez no longer appears (as viewers who reached the end of the last season released on Filmin know) and now the lead role falls to