In keeping with its commitment to domestic cinema, D’A 2018 is bringing back its Un Impulso Colectivo section, to which a programme of shorts has been added to now include 14 features and 13 short films with a wide variety of themes, stories and voices.
In addition to the films that have already been announced, we can now add the magnetic Trinta Lumes by Diana Toucedo – editor of Penèlope and A estación violenta, which are also appearing at this edition of D’A–, a movie premiered at the Berlinale, part fiction and part documentary and set in a small Galician village when the dead seem to walk among the living. It’s a similar setting to that of Galicia Dhogs by Andrés Goteira, winner of five awards from the Academia Galega do Audiovisual, a surprising debut feature that’s a rare example of Spanish fantasy cinema.
It is going to be an honour at D’A 2018 to welcome back some of the directors who presented their debuts at the festival: Sotabosc is the evocative tile of the new film by David Gutiérrez Camps, director of the celebrated The Juan Bushwick Diaries; and No quiero perderte nunca by Alejo Levis, a sensorial drama about the fear of growing old and dying. And things wouldn’t be the same without two of the usual suspects of this festival (albeit very different from each other) with their latest movies. The new release from Ramón Lluís Bande, Escoréu, 24 de avientu de 1937, which is a dialogue with his previous projects, is another in-depth look at the demands for the historical memory and forgotten of the Spanish Civil War; and Puta y amada, the new film by Marc Ferrer, in which he continues his quest for highly personalised and offbeat cinema with an exploration of the end of youth that’s crammed with autobiographical elements.
There is also room for documentaries, including an offering from Gerard Ortín Castellví, titled Perrolobo (Lycisca), that constantly plays with experimental forms and introspective audio; the directorial debut of Íngrid Guardiola with a docu-essay called Casa de ningú; and Ainhoa, yo no soy esa, the second film by Carolina Astudillo that uses a personal tale to paint a global portrait of Barcelona in the eighties. The names in this Un Impulso Colectivo section are completed by projects by two debutant women directors, Yo la busco by Sara Gutiérrez, a film that starts out as a generational comedy but morphs into a darker and more oneiric experience, and Ver a una mujer by Mònica Rovira, a visually extraordinary piece that almost becomes a self-affirmative exorcism.
Moving away from Un Impulso Colectivo and competing in the Talents section, we can also find two movies by local filmmakers: A estación violenta by young director Anxos Fazáns, loosely based on the book of the same name by Manuel Jabois, and with a script co-written with Ángel Santos (Las altas presiones); and Jean-François i el sentit de la vida, the feature length directorial debut of renowned short moviemaker Sergi Portabella, which deals with an adolescent who embarks on the odyssey of deciding to be an existentialist.
The last of the Spanish directors at D’A 2018, with the premiere of El vent és això, is Pere Vilà in an experiment with several pupils from the Santiago Sobrequés school in Girona. It started out as a didactic exercise but developed into a feature film with Alex Brendemühl as one of its stars.
