Every year the BFI London Film Festival brings the best new films to the capital as one of Europe’s leading public film events.
Visit www.bfi.org.uk/lff to see the full programme of feature films, shorts, documentaries and archive restorations to be presented at this year’s Festival, along with an exciting line-up of gala screenings and special events.
Amongst the programme, the LFF are delighted to present a selection of Spanish feature films including Amador, The Sleeping Voice, The Soul of Flies, and The Waves.
The Festival screenings will take place at a host of venues across the capital – BFI Southbank, Odeon Leicester Square, Vue West End, ICA, Curzon Mayfair and Ritzy.
Public booking opens 26 September. Book tickets online, in person or by phone – visit www.bfi.org.uk/lff for further information.
AMADOR
Fir 14 Oct, Vue7, 12:30
Sun 16 Oct, Vue5, 17:45
Mon 17 Oct, Vue5, 14:45
Bolivian immigrant Marcela (Magaly Solier) lives in Madrid with her partner Nelson (Pietro Sibille), who makes ends meet by selling flowers on the streets of the city. When the couple’s fridge breaks down, Marcela needs to find a job to make the payments on its replacement so that they can continue to keep the flowers fresh at home. She secures employment taking care of elderly bedridden Amador (Celso Bugallo) while his family are away for the summer. And while the relationship between patient and carer doesn’t appear too promising at first, gradually they find a mutual support and respect that is threatened by an unexpected turn of events. From Fernando León de Aranoa (Mondays in the Sun) comes a feature that moves from dark comedy to poetic realism. Compelling performances from Magaly Solier (The Milk of Sorrow, LFF 2009) and Celso Bugallo (Night of the Sunflowers, LFF 2006), crisp direction and an eye for the magic in the everyday, render Amador a minutely observed piece of cinema from one of Spain’s most acclaimed and socially incisive talents. Maria Delgado
Director / Screenplay
Fernando León de Aranoa
Cast
Magaly Solier
Celso Bugallo
Pietro Sibille
Sonia Almarcha
Production Details
Spain 2011
112min
FUTURES MARKET
MERCADO DE FUTUROS
Fri 14 Oct, ICA, 20:45
Sun 16 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT3, 15:45
Mon 17 Oct, BFI Southbank – STUDIO, 19:00
The contents of a home are emptied and then trampled on in an outdoor market. Real-estate salesmen peddle their wares in showrooms where giant shiny billboards promise paradise to those who buy into the myth. Brokers sell stocks and shares in a frenzied market. Salesmen are lectured on motivation and stress. In contrast to those fed by dreams of property in exotic locations, or the quick sell in the world of high finance, there is 92-year-old Jesús Castro. Jesús sells the wares others throw out from a garage converted into a makeshift store. From his vantage point he watches the world and ruminates on events past and present with those who pass by. From Mercedes Álvarez, director of the acclaimed The Sky Turns (LFF 2005) comes a study of ways of looking and observing what surrounds us. Delicately weaving together the different threads of the film with the writings of the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos and works by Michelangelo and Bosch, Álvarez crafts an elegant and highly moving documentary on history, mortality, memory and the politics of commerce in the contemporary world. Maria Delgado
Director
Mercedes Álvarez
Writers
Arturo Redín
Mercedes Álvarez
Production Details
Spain 2011
110min
THE LORD WORKED WONDERS IN ME
EL SENYOR HA FET EN MI MERAVELLES
Fri 14 Oct, ICA, 13:00
Sat 15 Oct, ICA, 15:15
As part of a project for the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Albert Serra and Lisandro Alonso agree to exchange filmed letters where both engage with characters and conceits from their previous works. Serra revisits Honour of the Knights (Quixotic) (LFF 2006), moving the cast and crew of the original film to the arid landscape of La Mancha, the original setting for Don Quixote’s adventures and misadventures. Between takes, Serra’s cast and crew watch, bicker, argue, eat and wait for Albert. There are echoes of Truffaut’s Day for Night in the appealing simplicity of Serra’s approach. The Lord Worked Wonders in Me, however, is more than just a film about filmmaking. Lyrical absurdism, an uncompromising cinematic vision and the attention to composition evidenced in his earlier features all combine to provide a commentary on a 21st-century quest with earlier antecedents. Maria Delgado
Director
Albert Serra
Production Details
Spain 2011
146min
UNTITLED (LETTER FOR SERRA) SIN TÍTULO (CARTA PARA SERRA)
A figure in the grass with a gun, a name called out in the distance, a woodcutter and a man who has lost a dog are woven together by Lisandro Alonso in a meditation on the past we inherit and the future we construct.
Director
Lisandro Alonso
Production Details
Spain-Argentina 2011
23min
THE SLEEPING VOICE
LA VOZ DORMIDA
Thu 20 Oct, Vue6, 20:30
Fri 21 Oct, Vue6, 12:45
Sun 23 Oct, Mayfair, 13:30
In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Pepita leaves her home village in Córdoba for Madrid to be close to her sister who is pregnant and incarcerated in the women’s prison in Ventas. While Pepita doesn’t see herself as political, Hortensia refuses to bow to the new regime and continues to have contact with her husband Felipe (Daniel Holguín) and his colleagues in the Resistance. To help her sister, Pepita knows she has to become involved with the Republicans working clandestinely to defeat Franco, but this brings dangers that threaten both her security and that of her sister. For his third film Benito Zambrano (director of the acclaimed Solas, LFF 1999) turns to Dulce Chacón’s celebrated novel, offering a sweeping historical drama set against the backdrop of the grim years that followed the end of the Civil War. María León turns in a terrific performance as the gritty Pepita while Zambrano never shies from showing the horrors of prison life. The result is a moving and beautifully performed testament to those whose struggles have too often been ignored in historical narratives. Maria Delgado
Director
Benito Zambrano
Screenplay
Benito Zambrano
Ignacio del Moral
Cast
María León
Inma Cuesta
Marc Clotet
Jesús Noguero
Production Details
Spain 2011
128min
THE SOUL OF FLIES
EL ALMA DE LAS MOSCAS
Mon 24 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT2, 20:45
Wed 26 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT2, 15:45
Miguel (Javier Saéz) and Nero (Andrea Calabrese) meet for the first time at a deserted train station en route to their father Evaristo de la Serra’s funeral. These half-brothers are going to pay their respects to a philanderer who never made time for either of them. Only the journey is not as straightforward as the siblings may think, and the yellow brick road of arid Castile takes Miguel and Nero on a Beckettian journey – these are the tramps of Waiting for Godot refracted through the dual lens of absurdism and magic realism – where one can never be sure what lies around the corner. Shot on a shoestring budget with a production team of seven, Jonathan Cenzual Burley’s debut feature is a humorous tale of two contrasting personalities coming to terms with their fears and foibles – and encountering some quirky characters along the way. Featuring a terrific musical score by Tim Walters and Andrea Calabrese, and some lovely performances from the largely non-professional cast, The Soul of Flies is an enjoyable road movie on the meaning of life, death and the universe in an age where everybody is in a hurry to get somewhere fast. Maria Delgado
Director / Screenplay
Jonathan Cenzual Burley
Cast
Andrea Calabrese
Javier Sáez
Production Details
Spain 2011
80min
THE WAVES
LAS OLAS
Thu 13 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT2, 13:00
Fri 14 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT2, 18:15
Alberto Morais’s second film charts the journey of an 80-year-old widower, Miguel (Carlos Álvarez-Nóvoa), from his home in Valencia to the French town of Argelès-sur-Mer, close to the Spanish border, where he spent time as a refugee in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War almost 60 years earlier. Miguel has a car that doesn’t look as if it will survive the journey, a form of narcolepsy that sends him to sleep at regular intervals and a friend, Fernando, in Barcelona who he can’t seem to get hold of. Miguel is also haunted by memories of the Civil War and its scars are evident across the landscape he encounters en route to France. The Waves, winner of both the FIPRESCI and the Golden St George prizes at the Moscow Film Festival, is about coming to terms with a past that has left an indelible mark on the present. Carlos Álvarez-Nóvoa gives an award-winning performance as Miguel, a figure often lost in thought, whose journey awakens a series of memories that reverberate across the texture and mise-en-scène of this memorable feature. Maria Delgado
Director
Alberto Morais
Screenplay
Alberto Morais
Daniel Martin
Ignacio Gutierrez-Solanas
Cast
Carlos Álvarez-Nóvoa
Laia Marull
Armando Aguirre
Sergio Caballero
Production Details
Spain 2011
94min
Co-productions
CORRESPONDENCE: JONAS MEKAS – JL GUERÍN
CORRESPONDENCIA: JONAS MEKAS – JL GUERÍN
Wed 19 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT3, 18:30
Thu 20 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT3, 15:45
In a series of five letters to each other, presented in Spanish and English, José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas exchange ideas, thoughts, visions and reflections on cinema, realism and life. A trip through Paris, a visit to Henry David Thoreau’s hut at Walden Forest, the revisiting of footage in the cutting room, conversations with film critic Nika Bohinc, travels through Krakow, meals shared with friends, fleeting sights from a moving train, observations from the Venice Festival are all woven in highly personal letters that testify to Mekas’ principle (also shared by Guerín) that cinema is a reaction to life. Each filmmaker revisits past images, framed by commentaries that offer telling insights into their working methodologies. This is a film about friendship and craft, about poetry and cinema, modes of communicating and fragments of life captured on screen. ‘I have a need to tape, for whatever reason’, states Mekas, ‘I do not know what makes me do it, but I have to do it, I just have to do it’. Correspondence is both a visual trace of this journey and a memorable illustration of Thoreau’s dictum that ‘the world is but a canvas to our imaginations’. Maria Delgado
Directors
José Luis Guerín
Jonas Mekas
Production Details
Spain-USA 2011
99min
LAS ACACIAS
Mon 17 Oct, Vue6, 18:00
Tue 18 Oct, Vue6, 15:00
At the start of Pablo Giorgelli’s feature debut, truck driver Rubén picks up Jacinta, a young mother carrying her eight-month-old son Anahí. Rubén is driving with his cargo of timber from Asunción del Paraguay to Buenos Aires, and he’s agreed to take on these extra passengers for a fee. Played with flinty conviction by Germán de Silva, he’s a man of few words, and his dour, unsmiling expression remains fixed on the road, not the handsome woman and child in the cab next to him. For Jacinta (a performance of unaffected warmth from Hebe Duarte) this is clearly going to be a long journey, despite her efforts to engage the taciturn Rubén. And yet gradually the strained atmosphere gives way to conversation, and to genuine affection, and the suspicion – or hope – grows that the guarded, gruff Rubén may even be falling in love. Owing a debt to the ‘slow cinema’ of Lisandro Alonso, this also has a slow-burning charm that is entirely its own thing. Las Acacias requires patience but it rewards you with one of the most enchanting and uplifting experiences you’ll have in the cinema this year. Edward Lawrenson
Director
Pablo Giorgelli
Screenplay
Pablo Giorgelli
Salvador Roselli
Cast
Germán de Silva
Hebe Duarte
Nayra Calle Mamani
Production Details
Argentina-Spain 2011
85min
UK Distribution
Verve Pictures
MEDIANERAS
Fri 21 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT2, 20:45
Mon 24 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT1, 15:45
Martín (Javier Drolas) is a web designer addicted to gaming who won’t leave his shoe-box apartment. He’s seeing a psychiatrist twice a week in the hope of tackling his panic attacks, listlessness, neurosis, insecurity and stress. His girlfriend left her dog with him for a few weeks when she left for the US, but she never returned, so Martín has both the pet and the phobias to deal with. Mariana (Pilar López de Ayala) is an architect now working as a window dresser who has just broken up with her partner after a four-year relationship. She too has her phobias and foibles – including a fear of lifts and an obsession with Where’s Wally? books. Martín and Mariana live close to each other; but in the madness of the 21st-century urban metropolis, it’s all too easy to miss the person across the street when you’re looking for love. Argentine director Gustavo Taretto’s debut feature is a quirky, unconventional romantic comedy set against the backdrop of contemporary Buenos Aires. Art, angst and architecture are imaginatively brought together in a witty, playful homage to a stylish city and its idiosyncratic inhabitants. Maria Delgado
Director / Screenplay
Gustavo Taretto
Cast
Pilar López de Ayala
Javier Drolas
Inés Efrón
Rafa Ferro
Carla Peterson
Production Details
Argentina-Germany-Spain 2011
95min
Short Film
IT’S NOBODY’S FAULT
NADIE TIENE LA CULPA
(Screening as part of THE SCHOOL OF LIFE programme)
Fri 14 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT3, 15:45
Mon 17 Oct, BFI Southbank – NFT2, 18:15
Antonio comes home with the intention of leaving his wife and three children. He wants a second chance to fulfill his youthful dreams.
Director
Esteban Crespo
Production Details
Spain 2011
14min
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El Vasco de Moda 
Dear Member
Si Patricia está en Madrid y tu aquí, ¿cómo os comunicáis? 
Equally, British writers have underlined his passion as something truly special. But what was burning inside the very English Nick Faldo for him to apply such meticulous tenacity to the aim of becoming the best golfer of the world at his time? It may be that Severiano Ballesteros by simply showing his flame unbridled for all to see became the star that illuminated the life of so many Britons. 
