After a 10-year hiatus, the ¡Viva! Tour of UK cinemas is back, with the support of the BFI, awarding funds from The National Lottery.
The UK’s largest and most popular celebration of Spanish and Latin American culture which celebrates 25 years of cross-border creativity, collaborations and partnerships in 2019 will be bringing the best new cinema from Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America to cinemas nationwide.
Presented by HOME Manchester and reflecting HOME’s 2019 theme Celebrating Women in Global Cinema, the touring films will all foreground female creative talent in the roles of director, writer, producer or star.
¡Viva!’s film programme is curated by Rachel Hayward, HOME’s Head of Film, Jessie Gibbs, ¡Viva! Festival Coordinator, and Andy Willis, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and HOME’s Senior Visiting Curator: Film.
Rachel Hayward comments:
At a time in history when the issue of borders is predominant, we welcome our 25th annual celebration of cross-border creativity and partnerships. For a quarter of a century, we have been honoured to bring the best new film and creative work from Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America to UK audiences, and we look forward to continuing to do so over the next 25 years! ¡Disfrutad el festival!
Films screening at GFT are:
Mon 25 Mar, 20:00 + Q&A
Dir Andrea Jaurrieta/ES 2018/105 mins
Ingrid García Jonsson, Mona Martínez, María José Alfonso, Álvaro Ogalla
This directorial debut feature from Jaurrieta – teacher, scriptwriter, producer, editor and actor – is a thrilling journey into the personal liberation of a woman unexpectedly expelled from her comfortable but unfulfilling life when a mysterious doppelgänger takes her place. Including echoes of Hitchcock and Lynch, an uncanny atmosphere pervades the film as Ana abandons her fiancé and career, and embraces an alternative version of herself, complete with a job in a seedy cabaret. Exploring her sexuality from this new position in society, Ana seems both vulnerable and empowered, an eerie ambiguity that holds the audience in suspense until the end. With its vibrant use of sound and colour, and masterful framing and editing, plus a whole host of quirky characters, this is great fun to watch.
Event: Director Andrea Jaurrieta will participate in a post-screening Q&A
Jean-François i el sentit de la vida (Jean-François and the Meaning of Life)
Mon 8 Apr, 17:50
Dir Sergi Portabella/ES FR 2018/90 mins/Catalan wEngST
Max Megias, Claudia Vega, Pau Durà, Théo Cholbi
Portabella’s debut film is a witty and whimsical take on the growing pains of adolescence. Young teenager Francesc – a solitary boy with an eye patch and a psychiatrist – is natural prey for school bullies, until he finds a novel escape in the form of French existentialist philosophy. With deep commitment to the ideas of Albert Camus, he turns up his coat collar, calls himself Jean-François, and resolves to make a pilgrimage from Catalonia to Paris. En route he meets Lluna, an older girl who awakens his budding hormones and becomes his surprising travel companion. Accompanied by a baroque score and suitably philosophical chapter titles, this is a stylish and sweet coming-of-age tale. Winner of Best Director and Best Score at the Toulouse Cinespaña.
Mon 15 Apr, 17:35
Dir Carlos Vermut/ES FR 2018/124 mins
Eva Llorach, Najwa Nimri, Carme Elías, Natalia de Molina
Dive down the rabbit hole into an enigmatic hall of mirrors featuring a beloved singer and her talented fan; an amnesiac superstar and her devoted assistant; a doting mother and her bullying daughter… When an ‘accident’ leaves fame-weary Lila with acute memory loss, super-fan Violeta’s remarkable karaoke performance suggests an unusual solution – Violeta can teach Lila to be Lila again. Drawing comparisons with Hitchcock, Bergman and Almodóvar, and voted Best Film by the critics at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, madrileño director Vermut continues to create stylish and exciting cinema packed with complex female leads. With great music, witty dialogue, dark emotions and high drama, this is a hypnotic film to disturb and delight as the sophisticated plot unfurls.
Miriam miente (Miriam Lies)
Mon 22 Apr, 18:30
Dirs Natalia Cabral & Oriol Estrada/DR ES 2018/80 mins
Dulce Rodríguez, Carolina Rohana, Pachy Méndez, Frank Perozo
This award-winning first fiction feature from Cabral and Estrada is a coming-of-age story that transports you to the Caribbean with a theme they know well: class conflict in the Dominican Republic. In this conflict whiteness is aligned with higher status, something which mixed race teenager Miriam cannot fail to see, not least in the attitude of her own (white) mother. As Miriam and her friend Jennifer prepare for the their joint 15th birthday party extravaganza, panic sets in when she realises the date she’s met online is in fact black. It’s tragic to witness the corrosive effects on all concerned of this endemic and internalised racism, but Miriam is bound to win your heart in this topical exploration of identity politics.
Mon 29 Apr, 18:00
Dir Jaime Rosales/ES 2018/105 mins/Spanish & Catalan wEngST
Bárbara Lennie, Alex Brendemühl, Joan Botey, Marisa Paredes
Auteur filmmaker Rosales brings the atmosphere of Greek tragedy to contemporary Spain in this portrait of a broken family suffering the consequences of secrets, lies and violence. Petra, a fatherless young woman, embarks on a search that leads her to Jaume, a famous artist and a powerful, ruthless man (remarkably portrayed by a non-professional actor). Petra’s story entwines with the lives of Jaume, his wife and their son, and step-by-step their fates are sealed. The non-chronological order reflects their predestined outcomes, with chapters that rearrange the plot to give you flashes of foresight and hindsight. Shot on location near Madrid and Girona, the camera gracefully glides across the beautiful rural scenery in this darkly witty melodrama, which should tease, surprise and engage all the way to the end!