The director Oscar Aibar was astonished when, fifteen years ago, he discovered on the wall of a bar in Calpe (Alicante) the photograph of some Germans partying in SS uniforms. They explained to him naturally that they were ‘the Nazis of Denia’, who, protected by Franco, had been living for decades in a golden retreat. Some of them even wrote a letter to the newspapers complaining that in the ‘Saturday Cinema’ movies the bad guys were always the Germans …
Aibar sets ‘The Substitute’ in 1982, which takes its name from the main character, a police officer hardened in rough neighborhoods in Madrid (Ricardo Gómez), who accepts a destination in a town on the Mediterranean coast. With the help of a doctor (Vicky Luengo), he will end up discovering Nazi Army officers living peacefully. Baptizing some Dreyer bungalows and launching a final taunt at Vox are some of the nods to this thriller that, like ‘The Laws of the Border’, still on the billboard, recovers a Spain that had not shaken off the dandruff of Francoism.
The Audience Award in the Pearls section of the San Sebastian Festival certifies that the film by Céline Sciamma, author of ‘Portrait of a Woman on Fire’, touches the viewer’s heart wherever it has been seen. The French filmmaker defends that because children have lived less, that does not mean that they are idiots. So in his fifth feature film, he explores how children cope with loss thanks to the power of their imaginations. It does so through the story of an eight-year-old girl who has just lost her grandmother and who, in the company of a little friend her age, discovers her mother’s play territories when she was little.
The shadow of the Monster family and the Addams looms over this German cartoon film, starring a brood that transforms into a vampire, Frankenstein, the mummy, and the werewolf to solve wrongs. It can help the little ones overcome this bridge.
‘Spain, the first globalization’
A whole history lesson from the hand of José Luis López-Linares, winner of three Goyas with his documentaries. Stanley G. Paine, Elvira Roca and Fernando García de Cortázar, among others, are some of the participants in a film that aims to erase the black legend associated with Spain since the time of the Catholic Monarchs. “A history that has been buried under a mountain of propaganda, lies and half-truths, which makes us grow in some way self-conscious,” says López-Linares.
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