After a successful tour around Scotland’s cities, the Catalan Film Festival arrives online to be enjoyed by audiences across the UK and Ireland, 16 – 26 February 2023.

This year, the approach is different as we will offer a specific retrospective with different films than those showing in person. A specific ad-hoc programme focusing on the Catalan countryside, recovering some of the early films by Goya and Gaudi winners like Pilar Palomero or Clara Roquet, and some of the most exciting emerging Catalan talents.

The Catalan Film Festival online will be dedicated to bring together a programme of short films and a feature film to rethink how recent Catalan cinema and literature have portrayed and approached the rural world. We are happy to offer also the moving documentary D’OMBRES (ON SHADOWS) by Joan Tisminetzky, following the life of iconic Catalan cinematographer Tomas Pladevall (Premi Gaudí d’Honor 2022)

The online programme will be available to audiences in UK & Ireland from 16 – 26 February, via our online festival page at FesthomeTV.

RETROSPECTIVE | RURAL CATALONIA FEATURE

LES PERSEIDES – Alberto Dexeus y Ànnia Gabarró
Year: 2019
Duration: 72 min
Language: Catalan
Subtitles: English, Spanish

Alberto Dexeus and Ànnia Gabarró film a bright and intimate coming of age that moves away from all conventionalism to establish itself as a subtle and courageous political cinema. A poetic debut close to the cinema of Víctor Erice from The Spirit of the Beehive, where some girls also played in uninhabited spaces with the echoes of the Civil War as a ghostly background. Les perseides is perceived as a story of hopeful deconstruction, focusing on the ability of youth to renew a stagnant society that their parents’ generation was unable to change.

SHORTS

WHEN THE MOUNTAIN RUMBLES – Alba Bersolí
Original title: El día que volaron la montaña
Year: 2022
Duration: 25 min
Language: Español
Subtitles: Inglés

Sinopsis: Three aging brothers must face an uncertain future and the inevitable end to years of self-imposed isolation as the abandoned village of Escó in Spain.Today, the construction of a motorway to the Pyrenees threatens Escó’s existence once again. What will be the final fate of the brothers and the curious place they call home?

Festivals: IndieLisboa, IDFA, Festival de Malaga, Sheffield Doc/Fest

WILD ANIMAL – Maria Besora
Original title: Animal Salvatge
Year: 2021
Duration: 23 min
Language: Catalan, Spanish
Subtitles: English
Synopsis: Janira has a special relationship with animals but difficulties with human language. She must choose to which world she wants to belong.

Festivals:D’A

LES BONES NENES – Clara Roquet
Year: 2016
Duration: 17 min
Language: Catalan, Spanish
Subtitles: English
Synopsis: After her debut with El adios, Clara Roquet distinguished herself not just as a great scrip-writer (10.000 km, Submarine), but as a promising director. Les bones nenesaffirms this first impression thanks to a story describing with transparent luminosity a girl’s loss of innocence living in a horse

Festivals: Ghent Film Festival, Gijón International Film Festival, Gaudí Awards

HORTA – Pilar Palomero
Year: 2017
Duration: 15:40 min
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English
Synopsis: Horta is the experimentation of the passage of time in oneself and the honest expression of a loss.

Festivals: Doclisboa, Festival de Málaga, DOCUMENTAMADRID, D’A Film Festival Barcelona, Festival Internacional Dona i Cinema, Festival de cine de Zaragoza, Festival Internacional Buñuel, Laterale Film FestivaL, Salón Internacional de la Luz, NeMaf Seoul International ALT Cinema & Media Festival, Frames of Representation – ICA London

CUCLI – Xavier Marrades
Year: 2016
Duration: 17 min
Language: Catalan
Subtitles: English
Synopsis: Ramon lives with his parents although he spends most of his time traveling with his truck. His journeys are long and lonely until he finds a very special companion who changes everything. Cucli is a story of love and companionship after death; of a relationship with transformative effects. How through resources, the supernatural makes its way into our daily lives.

Festivals: IDFA, FICCI, DOCUMENTAMADRID, Reykjavík International Film Festival, Tehran International Short Film Festival, Festival de Cortometrajes de Aguilar de Campo  & many more

THE BREEZE – Blanca Camell Galí, José López Pizarro
Original title: L’oreig
Year: 2014
Duration: 16 min
Language: Catalan, Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Synopsis: During what she thought would just be another summer evening, a chance encounter will mark the end of Julia’s childhood.

Festivals: Luna de cortos – Festival de cortometrajes del Órbigo, MOSCA – Mostra Audiovisual de Cambuquira, Bašta fest, L.A OLA showcase | United States, FEC – Festival Europeo de Curtmetratges

CAN GARDELL – Flor Aliberti, Sílvia Subirós
Original title: Can Gardell
Year: 2021
Duration: 22 min
Language: Catalan, Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Synopsis: For generations, the Gardell family have devoted themselves to life working the land. An unexpected change in the legal conditions of the land they farm gives Tomàs and Maria no choice but to turn their farm into a b&b, where they patiently wait for guests to arrive. Can Gardell is a fictional story with real characters; a portrait of a form of rural life that no longer seems to fit our modern times.

Festivals: IndieLisboa, ZINEBI, MECAL.

INERT MOTHER – Adria E. Goy
Original title: Mater inerta
Year: 2022
Duration: 28 min
Language: Catalan, Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish French
Showing in Glasgow and Dundee

Synopsis: Teresa works on a farm in the heart of the Catalan mountains, an environment threatened by the intensive exploitation of resources. The departure of her dog underscores the gradual disappearance of the links that the inhabitants maintain with this peaceful territory. Adrià Expòsit Goy creates a humanist fable haunted by ghosts.

Festivals: Visions du Réel – International Film Festival Nyon

BONUS TRACK

D’OMBRES – Joan Tisminetzky
Year: 2021
Length: 60 min
Language: Catalan
Subtitles: English
Age: U

Tomàs Pladevall is an admired cinematographer (known for being the sensitive eye behind the films of eminent catalan directors like Pere Portabella or Jose Luis Guerin); a master of light who seeks to recover and classify his personal archive. He carefully and rigorously completes and nurtures his legacy but closing the last box is a difficult task. The first of his films is lost. Retired from the profession, he cannot help playing with light and shadows, filming during the solstices and sunsets, or seeking to find secrets of centenary films, as if he were an alchemist magician.

FESTIVALS: Festival Internacional de Cine de Gijón FICX 2021, Festival Málaga 2022, DocumentaMadrid

TALKS

• On Alcarras. Discussion with Carla Simon
• Perspectives on Rural Catalonia. A Conversation between writer Núria Bendicho Giró (Terres Mortes) and directors Alberto Dexeus y Ànnia Gabarró (Les Perseides)
• Perspectives on Rural Catalonia. A conversation between Meritxell Colell and Alba Bresoli

RURAL CATALONIA. AN ONLINE RETROSPECTIVE.

CONTEXT:
In 2022, a Catalan film set in rural Catalonia won the Golden Bear in Berlinale (Alcarràs by Carla Simón) while mythical Catalonia was rediscovered in Irene Solà’s playful novel “When I Sing, Mountains Dance” winner the European Union Prize for Literature and included in TheGuardian’s Top Fiction of 2022.

Sometimes portrayed as a new trend, truth is Catalan literature and cinema has a long track record of authors seeking refuge and inspiration in the countryside. We take this opportunity to bring together a programme of short films and a feature film to rethink how recent Catalan cinema and literature have approached the rural world.

We want to invite audiences to rethink a recent trend amongst Catalan authors (both in Literature and Cinema) that are seeking refuge and inspiration in the rural world and the Catalan countryside. How does the territory where a story takes place influence the subject and protagonists? How does the emotional state of characters inhabiting a particular geographic territory relate to the landscape around them?

Portraying the beauty of a disappearing world, a world that vanishes, finding answers to address future challenges by returning closer to their roots in rural and remote parts of Catalonia, we want to bring together films and books discussing inspiration, nature, capitalism, ecology, tradition, heritage, family and the creative process. We do so with crepuscular views as well as contemplation of beauty, territory and landscape, and political commentary films taking on capitalism, depopulation and modern times in rural areas.