Wild Flowers launches New Spanish Cinema festival, at VIFF Centre on January 5 and 8
Opening night of the series, copresented with the Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre, features tapas, wine, and flamenco
Wild Flowers.
VIFF presents Wild Flowers on January 5 at 7 pm and January 8 at 3 pm at Vancity Theatre as part of New Spanish Cinema festival
FEW SPANISH FILMS, aside from those of Pedro Almodóvar, get much attention in North America. VIFF”s New Spanish Cinema festival aims to change that.
Its fourth edition, running January 5 to 8 after a long hiatus, is a copresentation with Ibero-American Images and AJA Entertainment.
The opening night film is 2022’s Wild Flowers by Jaime Rosales. Co-presented with the Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre (VLACC), the story centres on a young mother named Julia (a bedazzling Anna Castillo) who works to transcend her trying circumstances. She dreams of becoming a nurse but lacks education; her partner is estranged and in the army. She falls for Oscar (Oriol Pla), but he’s not exactly father material. Rosales structures the film around three men in Julia’s life while staying firmly focused on the woman herself and her resilience. It’s an ultimately empowering character study.
“A remarkable attention to emotional truthfulness, embodied primarily in a captivating, sometimes wrenching, and always relatable central performance by Anna Castillo… Wonderfully written… Wild Flowers has much to say… [it’s] a moving journey, too,” Screen International reported.
On opening night, the film will be followed by live flamenco, wine, tapas, and Serrano ham, courtesy of Paella Guys, Arc Iberico Imports, Antonio Romero, CRE, Spanish Society in BC, and Bodega on Main. (They’re all copresenters of the series.)
Other titles in the New Spanish Cinema lineup are Victor Erices’s Close Your Eyes (his first film in over 30 years) and 1973’s The Spirit of the Beehive; The Candidate, a political thriller by Rodrigo Sorogoyen (The Beasts); David Martin de los Santos’s That Was Life starring veteran actor Petra Martínez; and Memories of My Father by Fernando Trueba (Chico & Rita). All of the films except for The Spirit of the Beehive are having their Vancouver premiere.
More information is here.
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