The Wishful Thinkers

Madrid, Spain, 2010. While the whole city follows the national team's successful participation in the World Cup, a group of daring thieves look for a way into one of the most secure and guarded places on the planet.

José Sirgado is a low-budget filmmaker whose heroin addiction distorts his perspective of the real world. Although he is a depressed and unstable individual, his mood improves when he receives the mysterious films of Pedro, with whom he shares his passion for cinema.

After a young heiress is assaulted by a policeman, she seeks revenge by befriending the policeman’s mousy wife and introducing her to her circle of outrageous punk friends.

Matias meets Violeta, his cousin one morning in Madrid at the Plaza de Opera. He is twenty-five. She is 18. He's a divorced journalist trying to write a thriller. She studies violin. She's a vegetarian. He loves meat. Many things separate them, but he moves into her apartment.

A very handsome man finds the love of his life, but he suffers an accident and needs to have his face rebuilt by surgery after it is severely disfigured.

At a downtown Madrid building, an ordinary meeting of neighbors commune to vote on a change of elevator. However, the event escalates into a full-blown conflict after the unexpected announcement that a new, mentally ill tenant will rent an apartment.

Impelled by a spirit which still preserves a patina of idealism, Alfredo arrives to Madrid with the intention to create "a performance that is free, straight from the heart, capable of making people feel alive". His concept of what acting should be begins beyond the stage, out in the streets face to face with the public. Outdoors, in any town square, in a park or in the city's most commercial street, Alfredo and his troupe November start the show; demons to provoke passers-by, displays of social conscience, actions taken to the extreme to put the forces of law and order on full alert. There are no limits, no censorship; only ideas which are always valid so long as the public ceases to be the public and becomes part of the show swept by surprise, fear, tears or laughter. Theater as life, life as theater… there is no longer any difference.

Ten years after ratting on his old mobster friends in exchange for personal immunity, two hit men drive a hardened criminal to Paris for his execution. However, while on the way, whatever can go wrong, does go wrong.

Malasaña neighborhood, Madrid, Spain, 1976. While political turmoil ravages the streets all over the country, the Olmedo family arrives in the big city and settles into their new apartment. They soon discover that they are not the only ones roaming its corridors.

Javier Navarro, a Falangist, is ordered to infiltrate Republican Madrid to deliver a message to a member of the Fifth Column.

Pablo, a successful film director, disappointed in his relationship with his young lover, Juan, concentrates in a new project, a monologue starring his transgender sister, Tina. Antonio, an uptight young man, falls possessively in love with the director and in his passion would stop at nothing to obtain the object of his desire.

During the last years of Franco's dictatorship, Fernando, an old republican exile, returns to his home in a small Castilian village and befriends Aurora, a young and attractive teacher.

Pepa resolves to kill herself with a batch of sleeping-pill-laced gazpacho after her lover leaves her. Fortunately, she is interrupted by a deliciously chaotic series of events.

Leo is a middle-aged writer of popular romantic novels who writes under a pseudonym, since she despises her own work. At home, her husband, who works overseas, is distant both physically and emotionally. As she reevaluates her life and writing, Leo is led to an unexpected relationship with Ángel, a sensitive newspaper editor.

Manuela is left behind when her husband Justo fights for his ideals against Franco's Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. He is deported to a concentration camp, and upon his release, continues the fight against nationalism in the French resistance. Years pass without a word from him, but his wife never gives up hope of seeing him again.

Various lives converge on an isolated island, all connected by an author whose novel has become inextricably entwined with his own life.

Ivanhoe Martin arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, looking for work and, after some initial struggles, lands a recording contract as a reggae singer. He records his first song, "The Harder They Come," but after a bitter dispute with a manipulative producer named Hilton, soon finds himself resorting to petty crime in order to pay the bills. He deals marijuana, kills some abusive cops and earns local folk hero status. Meanwhile, his record is topping the charts.

A conflicted youth confesses to crimes he didn't commit while a man and woman aroused by death become obsessed with each other.

Harry Caine, a blind writer, reaches this moment in time when he has to heal his wounds from 14 years back. He was then still known by his real name, Mateo Blanco, and directing his last movie.

An array of outrageous people, including a desperate nymphomaniac and a terrorist with an acute sense of smell, seek love and happiness in Madrid.