For months they have been watching and rewatching films to build a top-tier programme, as always. They are the programming advisors, and they know their craft. You’ll find them in the theatres, presenting the films, moderating discussions—intelligent yet neutral. Here, we asked them to be bold and choose one film they believe you shouldn’t miss. Between these and the director’s ten As, your week would already be sorted! But hey—before that, don’t forget to check out the activities that make D’A a space for debate, industry and authorship in action!

Our film programmers are: Violeta Kovacsics, Alba Cros, Carlos Losilla, Eulàlia Iglesias, Diana Santamaría, Xavi Arnaiz, Irena Visa, Jordi Sanz Angrill, Tariq Porter, Flor Clérico and Marc Barceló.

Des preuves d’amour + Nuestro cuerpo es una estrella que se expande

Alice Douard crafts in Des preuves d’amour a feel good movie about two women facing motherhood for the first time. With humour, emotion, and focusing on the non-gestational mother, it offers a warm and beautiful human story, with Ella Rumpf and Monia Chokri full of chemistry and naturalness. Also worth highlighting is the beautiful Nuestro cuerpo es una estrella que se expande by Semillites and Tania Hernández Velasco, where through hybrid cinematic forms they explore their identity as siblings. 
-Alba Cros

Los bobos

We knew Sofía Jallinsky and Basovih Marinaro from the (very) irreverent Palestra and Estertor. Their new film, Los bobos, continues this spirit with a rebellious tone that doesn’t seek offence for its own sake, but instead conceals an uncomfortable and expansive political dimension—here through a narrative about clandestine lobotomies that completely dismantles the so-called “cinema of cruelty”. The result is a splendid and savage underworld thriller, or an extremely dark comedy, or a brutal drama about the desire for a neutralised society. It is such an extreme and self-aware proposal that it must be seen to be believed.
-Xavi Arnaiz

The Plant from the Canaries

As the most surprising debut in Spanish cinema in years, Anoche conquisté Tebas arrives with strong momentum, I would highlight this debut feature premiered in Locarno, which draws from the spirit of Hong Sang-soo from its brief runtime, its understated humour, and the temperament of its protagonist—a young Korean woman spending Christmas in Berlin after her boyfriend has left her. With echoes also of Tsai Ming-liang and Wong Kar-wai, the first film by Ruan Lan-Xi demonstrates (like another D’A name, Alexandre Koberidze) the strength of the talent emerging from the DFFB, the Berlin Film School.
-Eulàlia Iglesias

Viene tormenta

If cinema were a great poker game, Viene tormenta would be one of the most legendary all-ins of the season. Cristóbal Arteaga takes a beautiful, simple and daring idea to its ultimate consequences, and the result is a play of contrasts that brings together pyrotechnic science fiction and rural realism within the same space-time. A winning bet that, from a small but deeply committed cinematic gesture, dares to cross opposing concepts to transform plausible tragedies into implausible epics and, ultimately, irreverent comedies. A short work that never bluffs and elevates the idea of fiction by turning a small world into the vast terrain where beauty always prevails.
-Tariq Porter

Muito barulho

Anyone who has ever had to break up with a partner knows it’s a process that feels daunting, and that the support of friends plays a fundamental role. In Muito barulho, these two factors are skilfully combined, adding a handycam to the equation: what happens if your friend accompanies you through this process, records it, and it becomes a documentary? The result, far from being a specific case, becomes a universal story that opens up space to reflect on friendship, low-cost flights and tourist apartments. With a narrative intuition that flows throughout the runtime and an emotion sustained by everyday conversations, the piece becomes just that: real documentation, like life itself. Nothing more is needed.
-Irena Visa

El hielo quema tanto como el fuego

Miguel Ariza, who has presented his films at the festival on several occasions, stands out for his simplicity and ingenuity. In this work, he returns with a cinematic portrait of a group of friends: love, the city and the night; a simple yet daring vision of an era. Gradually and generously, he introduces us to “ordinary” characters who, thanks to a strong mise-en-scène, become extraordinary.
-Flor Clérico

La noche está marchándose ya

A film about cinema, a film about life, La noche está marchándose ya, the debut feature by Ezequiel Salinas and Ramiro Sonzini, is not only a fable about Milei’s disastrous Argentina, nor about the effects of fascism on a country and its people. It is also a film made of other films that appear on the screen to tell the story of an art always ready to redeem us. It features a black and white that is both sinister and luminous, from which authentic faces emerge—bodies that could be our own.
-Carlos Losilla

L’Aventura

Sophie Letourneur makes her debut at D’A. The acclaimed and eclectic French filmmaker presents the second part of her trilogy on desire, family and parenting, premiered in the ACID selection at the Cannes Film Festival. After Voyages en Italie (2023), in L’Aventura she proposes a chaotic road trip in Sardinia starring Jean-Phi—the stepfather, played by the hilarious Philippe Katerine—Sophie—played by Letourneur herself—and their children Claudine and Raoul, immersed in the relentless rhythm of summer. With an almost documentary immediacy, the camera captures the day-to-day life of a family on holiday—conversations, arguments, rushes—and reveals the complexity of coexistence without dramatizing it. A fascinating and eccentric film about the beauty of banality and everyday gestures that fully asserts Letourneur’s gaze: delicate, fresh, irreverent.
-Diana Santamaría

Affection Affection

It is low season in a small town on the French Riviera, and amid silence and emptiness, a series of disappearances, reappearances and explosions erupts. Géraldine decides to take justice into her own hands and investigate this web where oral storytelling becomes a driving force and a source of contradictions, secrets, lies and narratives. It is remarkable how Affection Affection brings out great tenderness within this multi-layered plot, shifting between awkward and absurd comedy, police thriller and artificial triviality. After its screening in Locarno, this small but great film arrives at D’A—simple and austere, yet deeply human.
-Jordi Sanz Angrill

Las corrientes

Lina is at the peak of her career, but suddenly suffers an incident: she falls into the water without it being entirely clear what happened. Thus, the premise of Las corrientes is a crisis. The film by Milagros Mumenthaler is a praise of framing, of the shot: of a strand of hair, of gloves, of a face. The mise-en-scène guides us, through humour, mystery and affection, towards the question of the feminine—so often simplified and mystified—without falling into clichés.
-Violeta Kovacsics

Calidoscopi comtal

Deliberately a draft, some notes, a kaleidoscope… Guillem BG fills us with oxygen and offers advice for many: the past is full of things to teach us. We step outside ourselves to become more ourselves. The city has history, history has stones, stained-glass and rooftops. And, too often forgotten, history sounds. This comital kaleidoscope is a sincere and transparent ode to Barcelona’s material and immaterial heritage, filmed with the curiosity of someone searching for the right light, the framing that never quite arrives, and with the conviction of music as a moral refuge. When the notes stop, we might hear the muffled cry of History, right beside us.
-Marc Barceló