María Jesús Hoyos

The Imposter

Bart Layton

Frédéric Bourdin, Adam O'Brian

In 1994 a 13-year-old boy disappeared without a trace from his home in San Antonio, Texas. Three-and-a-half years later he is found alive thousands of miles away in a village in southern Spain with a horrifying story of kidnap and torture. His family is overjoyed to bring him home. But all is not quite as it seems.

Al acecho

Gerardo Herrero

Giuliano Gemma, Amparo Muñoz

Maixabel

Icíar Bollaín

Blanca Portillo, Luis Tosar

In the year 2000, Maixabel Lasa’s husband, Juan Maria Jauregi, was killed by ETA. Eleven years later, she receives an incredible request: one of the men who killed Juan wants to meet with her in the Nanclares de la Oca prison in Araba (Spain), where he is serving his sentence after breaking ties with the terrorist group. Despite her reservations and her immense pain, Maixabel Lasa agrees to meet face to face with those who ended the life of the person who had been her companion since she was 16 years old. ‘Everyone deserves a second chance’, she said, when asked why she was willing to confront the man who killed her husband.

Perfect Strangers

Álex de la Iglesia

Belén Rueda, Eduard Fernández

During a lunar eclipse, seven friends gather for dinner and decide to play a game in which they must share with each other the content of every message, email or phone call they receive throughout the evening.

Pájaros de papel

Emilio Aragón

Imanol Arias, Lluís Homar

At the end of the Spanish Civil War, the members of a group of vaudeville performers have been stripped of everything: all they have left is hunger and the instinct to survive. Day after day, agonizingly, lost and helpless between the victors and the vanquished, the musician Jorge, the ventriloquist Enrique, the couplet singer Rocío and the orphan Miguel search tirelessly for something to eat and a safe place to live.

The Trojan Women

Mihalis Kakogiannis

Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave

In the aftermath of the Trojan Wars, Queen Hecuba takes stock of the defeated kingdom. Her son has been killed, and his widow, Andromache, is left to raise their son, Astyanax, alone. Hecuba's daughter, Cassandra, fears being enslaved by her Greek masters, while Helen of Troy risks being executed. Astyanax also becomes the focus of the Greeks' attention as the last male heir of the Trojan royal family.

El año de las luces

Fernando Trueba

Jorge Sanz, Verónica Forqué

April, 1940. Manolo, 16 years old, and Jesus, who is just 8, are taken by their older brother Pepe, a lieutenant in the Army, to a sanatorium for children suffering from tuberculosis, situated on the border with Portugal. Once in the sanatorium, Manolo, surrounded by boys all much younger than he is, feels a bit like the cock of the walk since the only other man around is the handyman Emilio who looks after the gardens and does whatever needs to be done about the place. His wife, Rafaela, is the cook. Manolo meets Irene, a falangist who runs the sanatorium, and the school teacher, Miss Transito, a crabby spinster. He has his first sexual experience, albeit as a voyeur, with his nurse Vicenta. When she has to leave, her place is taken by a girl from the village, Maria Jesus, with whom Manolo falls hopelessly in love. A relationship grows up between them which will mark them both for ever.

Jarabo

Juan Antonio Bardem

Sancho Gracia, María José Alfonso

July 21, 1958. Madrid wakes up to the news that a pawnbroker has been murdered in his shop. Soon, police finds that the victim's associate, his pregnant wife and their maid have been murdered as well in their own home across the street.

El diputado

Eloy de la Iglesia

José Sacristán, María Luisa San José

Madrid, Roberto Orbea is a member of the Spanish communist party. He is married to Carmen, and he has been elected as Deputy in the first democratic elections in Spain. But his enemies, the fascist, know his double life. Roberto likes boys, and they hire Juanito to seduce the politician. They fall in love...

El Lute: camina o revienta

Vicente Aranda

Imanol Arias, Victoria Abril

In Spain of the 1960s, a poor family of quinquis - a nomadic ethnic group with a tradition as old as that of the gypsises of Spain but with even more obscure origins - have a nomadic life marked by poverty. The son, Eleuterio Sánchez Rodriguez, nicknamed "El Lute", steals some chickens and is condemned to six months in jail. El Lute moves to the slum outskirts of Madrid with his common law wife, Chelo, starting an itinerant life as a peddler of pots and pans and living in a quinqui shantytown. He gradually embarks upon as life of petty criminality, eventually participating in the theft of a jewelry store during which a bystander is killed.

Siete mil días juntos

Fernando Fernán Gómez

José Sacristán, Pilar Bardem

Petra and Matthias are a bad marriage. He works as a janitor at the school of anatomy. Petra has a bitter and uncompromising character, so that their discussions with Matthias are constant, but she is careful not to ever lift his voice. He, however, does not care who tell and shouts without hesitation. The neighbors, who are some gossips are at the end of the street everything that happens in the house of Petra and Matthias.

Divinas palabras

José Luis García Sánchez

Ana Belén, Imanol Arias

A work of Valle-Inclán, the story takes place in Galicia in the early twentieth century. To escape poverty, the wife of a sacristan uses a hydrocephalic child as a sideshow attraction. This causes a confrontation with her sister-in-law.

Extramuros

Miguel Picazo

Carmen Maura, Mercedes Sampietro

This 1985 Spanish film reveals one of the many terrible aspects of 16th century Spain, still plagued by the radical Christian Inquisition, one of a plethora of difficulties Spaniards faced at the time. Spanish super star Carmen Maura plays a nun who agrees to a selfless scam, a fake stigmata, only to avoid separation from her lover, another nun. It's a serious and passionate work, highlighting the theme of outspoken women-against-repression, seen in other good gay and lesbian films. This is not a lesbian "Nun sense" or another "Dark Habits" (by Almodovar, which also starred Carmen Maura, and also set in a Spanish convent, with some lesbian nuns). Perhaps, best of all, 'Extramuros' is realistic and frank. It isn't shy about its characters' sexuality. Their sexuality, and the film as a whole are genuine.

La suerte dormida

Ángeles González-Sinde

Adriana Ozores, Félix Gómez

Amparo, a lawyer working as an advisor in an insurance company in Madrid is grieving over a traumatic event in her past. She will have to react, however, to the world surrounding her when a young man of her acquaintance dies mysteriously while working in a mine. Amparo will take over his case and discover in the process a world of corruption and illegal measures taken by the company that the young man worked for.

Réquiem por un campesino español

Francesc Betriu

Antonio Banderas, Terele Pávez

Hypocrisy and betrayal are the two dramatic pivots in this effective, emotionally gripping tragedy about the life and death of Paco (Antonio Banderas), a Spanish peasant who had been fighting against the feudal landowning system that kept farmers impoverished. Paco's life is told in flashbacks by a priest (Antonio Ferrandis) who is seen officiating at an anniversary mass attended by three wealthy landowners and no one else. The priest recalls Paco's baptism, his communion, his marriage ceremony and then his work for the peasants as he advocated and led them in a land-reform movement. The rest of the story will rest heavy on the priest's conscience, as he looks out at his empty church.

Erdbeben in Chili

Helma Sanders-Brahms

Julia Peña, Víctor Barrera

Tutor Jeronimo and heiress Josephe fall in love but are quickly torn from one another by execution and jail. However, when fate intervenes in the form of a massive earthquake, the two lovers have no idea what is in store for them.