Fabrizio Meschini

Manoa, the Golden City

When the retired seventy-seven years old hypochondriac widower Fred moves to an apartment in Madrid, his temperamental daughter Cuca has an incident with his next door neighbor, the elder Argentinean Elsa. Later, they meet each other and Elsa seduces Fred with her reckless behavior and view of life and they have a romance.

Father Vergara—an exorcist, boxer and ex-convict—lives in a remote village in Spain. Hoping to be lost and forgotten, Vergara’s demons catch up to him.

Recounts the experiences of a middle-class family, the Alcántaras, during the last years of the rule of Francisco Franco and the beginning of the Spanish Transition to democracy.