52 Sundays

During the Feria of Nîmes, a bullfight is filmed from the perspective of the animal, relegating the matador and public to off-screen spectators. A ritual at the frontiers of mysticism, carried by the sacrificial figure of the bull, revealer of our humanity.

The famous Spanish comedian Andreu Buenafuente, CEO of the production company El Terrat and prestigious TV host, tells how he and his numerous collaborators, both on set and behind the cameras, managed to carry on with their work despite the chaos and the several logistical and human problems caused by the global pandemic that began in early 2020.

Spain, 1968. An analysis of the political and social situation of the country, suffocated by the boot of General Franco's tyrannical regime. (Filmed clandestinely in Madrid and Barcelona during the spring of 1968.)

His teachers, coaches, childhood friends and Barça teammates, together with journalists, writers and prominent figures from the history of football, come together in a restaurant to analyze and pick apart Messi's personality both on and off the field, and to look back at some of the most significant moments in his life. Viewed from Álex de la Iglesia's unique perspective, Messi recreates the player's childhood and teenage years, from his very first steps, with a football always at his feet, through to the decision to leave Rosario for Barcelona, the separation from his family, and the role played in his career by individuals such as Ronaldinho, Rijkaard, Rexach and Guardiola.

Margarita

The many faces of Barcelona are portrayed in this documentary, shot in a false sequence shot that goes across the streets, squares, markets and bars of a city that is presented as both conventional and law-breaking, exquisit and shameless, elegant and dispossessed.

In their spare time, after their studies or their work, children and adolescents between the ages of eight and sixteen meet at the School of Bullfighting in Madrid to learn the Art of Cúchares: Torear. In their stomachs there is no hunger as in the past, their dreams do not lie in having a farmhouse and being famous. Their only dreams are to be in front of a bull, animal with which death goes, fact of which they are fully aware, as their teachers continually remind them. These, retired bullfighters, some by age, others by force and all with their bodies full of scars produced by the horns of a bull. The nude bullfighting scene is fascinating without being exploitive, and it serves as an analogy for the vulnerability these young bullfighters have when in the ring with the bulls.

Escribir no es normal: Roberto Bolaño y su paso por Cataluña

Have you ever been to the bullfights in Tijuana? Larry Wessel's TAUROBOLIUM is not only cinema verite at it's best, Larry Wessel's TAUROBOLIUM is the best documentary on bullfighting ever made!

A humorous observation in Barcelona’s immigrant neighbourhood El Raval. Four barber shops, four places of remembrance, strange time and space capsules inhabited by people who left their home to find a better one, while the Spaniards are about to leave their own country themselves.

Voy a saco, Guitarras y Clubs

Based on the negatives of the 33 'La Tauromaquia' engravings made by Goya in 1816, the director invites us to witness the transformation of bodies at the approach of death.

[Here] Pollet made a work that is the very definition of what French critics like to call an ovni or ufo (as in ‘unidentified filmic object’). [It] has been described as being ‘like a comet in the sky of French cinema,’ an ‘unknown masterpiece,’ and an ‘unprecedented’ work that refuses interpretation even as it has provoked reams of critical writing. Its rhythmic collage of images – a girl on a gurney, a fisherman, Greek ruins, a Sicilian garden, a Spanish corrida – is accompanied by an abstract commentary written by Sollers, and only the somber lyricism of Antoine Duhamel’s score holds the film’s elements together. At first viewing, you fear that [it] might fly apart into incoherent fragments. Instead, over the course of its 45 minutes it invents its own rules, and you realize you’re watching something like the filmic channeling of an ancient ritual.

Joan Ximénez el Petitet is a Catalan gypsy who pursues a dream. A former musician now —a percussionist, son of Ramón el Huesos who worked with the mythical singer Peret—, and affected by a rare chronic disease, he wants to accomplish the promise he made to his mother before she died: to celebrate a rumba concert on the stage of the Liceu, a great theater in Barcelona, along with a big symphony orchestra.

FC Pol Positiu are on a 2 year unbeaten streak in a league made up of players with mental illnesses. On their journeys as a unit and as individuals they contend with hospital admissions, the pressure of the game and what it means to be a team that accepts anyone, no matter who you are.

In a peripheral neighbourhood, where the rural and urban worlds meet, the houses of the first migrants who arrived after the post-war period coexist with the new blocks of the dormitory city, where the latest wave of migration is concentrated. This humble corner is now an authentic global village. Good Valley Stories is a sum of constructs, of social, generational and identity, urban and ecological conflicts, but it is also a calm and humanistic look at today’s world.

After his retirement, french philosopher and bullfighting enthusiast Francis Wolff decides to embark on a journey to France, Spain and Mexico joined by two mexican filmmakers who hardly know anything about bullfighting, a culture whose days seem to be numbered. During their road trip, they encounter numerous personalities with whom they reflect on mankind’s relationship with animals and nature, but most importantly on our relationship with death and the meaning of the ultimate journey: life itself.

From an observational perspective, this documentary captures the experiences of the students of the dance school of the Theatre Institute of Barcelona, during the celebration of its tenth anniversary of existence.

This short film "Torerillos 61" is one of the first works of the master Patino, which tries to portray the Spanish society of the time outside the state convention and dodging the hand of censorship. Social commitment is the brand director throughout his long career, starting with short films such as this one, made in the early sixties, in the wake of the statements in Talks Salamanca. The sadness off the characters portrayed is bleak, "Maletillas" (aspiring bullfighters) in search of luck to pull them out of poverty.

Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, the anarchist union CNT socialized the film industry in Spain, so in Madrid and Barcelona film workers took over the production assets and, between 1936 and 1938, numerous films on a wide variety of topics were released, composing a varied mosaic that gives rise to one of the most unusual and original moments of Spanish cinematography.