The D’A – Barcelona Film Festival is an opportunity to discover the best independent films of the year, the big names that have stood out and triumphed at international festivals, the most innovative proposals and the narrative richness of contemporary cinematography. Among the first great films at the festival is the return of Paul Schrader with The Master Gardener, world premiered at the Venice Biennale and starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver, with which the veteran writer-director closes a particular trilogy dedicated to forgiveness and redemption. We will see the great moment of Portuguese cinema with the new work by Rita Azevedo, El trio en E flat, a meta-cinematographic film based on the play of the same title written by Eric Rohmer, and the latest film by Joao Pedro Rodrigues, Fuego tuo , winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Seville Festival and in which the director of The Ornithologist presents a crazy musical.
Two auteur film snipers premiere new films at D’A 2023. On the one hand, Lav Diaz with When the Waves Are Gone, a vibrant thriller set against the backdrop of a Manila shaken by corruption and violence; and Kirill Serebrennikov, the most dissident of Russian directors, confronting the taboo of homosexuality of one of the untouchable myths of Russian culture in Tchaikovsky’s Woman. From the Argentine production company El Pampero Cine we get two of the moviegoing events of the year: Clorindo Testa by Mariano Llinás, the director of the cult film La flor and co-writer of Argentina 1985, and the new film by Laura Citarella, Trenque Lauquen, 260 overflowing minutes that go from romantic comedy to detective story in a work that impressed its way through Venice and San Sebastian.
Among the newest names in auteur cinema at D’A 2023, the Romanian film Metronom by Alexandru Belc, winner of the Best Director award in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2022; Anhell69 by Colombian director Theo Montoya, one of the most impressive films of the year with its portrayal of the young queer community in Medellín and which has received, among other awards, the Grand Prize of Critics’ Week at the Venice Biennale or the for best film at Zinebi; and Human Flowers of Flesh by the German director, Helena Wittmann, one of the key names in contemporary European cinema since she became known with Drift (2017).
