L’Alternativa. Independent Film Festival of Barcelona

24th edition

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  Zama, Lucrecia Martel

   

  The selection of L'Alternativa competition will take the pulse of contemporary international independent cinema, with 10 feature films and 15 short fiction and nonfiction films in which borders, human rights, personal freedom, dreams, hope, overcoming and the search for a new life are some of the common lines. The Spanish presence stands out, with El mar nos mira de lejos, by Manuel Muñoz, Donkeyote, by Chico Pereira, and Niñato, by Adrián Orr. The other seven feature films come from the US, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Germany, the United Kingdom, Lebanon, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. A detail to take into account are the operas prima, four of the ten films selected: Niñato, El mar nos mira de lejos, Stranger in Paradise by Guido Hendrikx and A Fábrica de Nada by Pedro Pinho.

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  Stangers in paradise, Guido Hendrikx

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  Niñato, Adrián Orr

    

  In Acts and Intermissions, Abigail Child, through the story of Emma Goldam, considered the most dangerous woman in the world in the 20th century, portrays feminism, anarchism and a permanent struggle for self-improvement and personal freedom. Subjects that we also find in Milla, by Valérie Massadian, where the director observes the time and the daily details in a unique way and without sentimentality, to offer a portrait of the protagonist of a great wealth and deeply moving. In Milla it's emphasized the search of the personal freedom and the overcoming of the limitations before the unexpected blows of the life, something that also we will see in Donkeyote, whose protagonist pretends to realize the brutal Senda de las lágrimas (Way of the tears), in the United States, with his donkey, despite the age and the difficulties. Or in A Fábrica de Nada, where the workers of a company dare to dream and to organize themselves when the company is going down. And in Niñato (brat), which portrays the dichotomy between two passions: Niñato as a father and Niñato as a young man trying to keep alive an artistic dream of adolescence. And in California Dreams, by Mike Ott, whose protagonists struggle to fulfill their aspirations but run into reality. A reality that also faces immigrants arrived in Europe in Stranger in Paradise, which reflects on the power relations between Europeans and refugees. From this film another one of the recurring points of reflection in the selection of this year is extracted: the borders, what they represent and how people face them. This is what Ziad Kalthoum's Taste of Cement proposes, from the perspective of workers in exile who live trapped in a reiterative present, or El mar la mar, by Joshua Bonnetta and JP Sniadecki, with their visual poetics of the border territory between Mexico and the United States. We even find it in El mar nos mira de lejos, through the apparent absence of borders and belonging to the margins, to an almost unknown territory.

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  Milla, Valérie Massadian

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  A fabrica de nada, Pedro Pinho

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  Taste of Cement, Ziad Kalthoum

  
  

  As for the parallel section, this year will bring to Barcelona the retrospectives of Michael Glawogger and Emmanuelle Riva, along with Deborah Stratman and Eric Pauwels, who will also visit the festival to give, respectively, the Sonic Rambling workshop and the seminar The distance respect to the other in the cinema in the first person.

  The Panorama section, dedicated to feature films and short films of national production, will give visibility to a selection of 19 films by emerging directors and groups such as Adán Aliaga, Ione Athena, Atxur Animazio Taldea, María Cañas, Samuel M. Delgado, Pau Cruanyes Garrell, Dostopos, Gerard Freixes Ribera, Helena Girón, Roger Gómez, Jaione, Julio Lamaña, Marina Lameiro, Alex Lora, Pilar Monsell, David Muñoz, Ricardo Perea, Ona Planas, Dani Resines, Martina Rogers Manzano, Nayra Sanz Fuentes, Hernan Talavera, Gonzalo E. Veloso and Gerard Vidal Barrena.

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  Nacktschnecken, Glawogger

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  Amour, Emmanuelle Riva

   

  Zama, the fourth and awaited new work of Lucrecia Martel (filmmaker to whom the festival dedicated a retrospective in 2015), will be the inaugural film of L'Alternativa 2017. Based on the novel by Antonio di Benedetto published in 1956, the director travels to colonial Paraguay, where the lawyer Diego de Zama fights for the Spanish crown, for being able to be transferred and for his identity.

  The central venue of L'Alternativa will be, as usual, the CCCB, together with the Filmoteca de Catalunya (Plaça Salvador Seguí, 1-9) and the Institut Francès (Moià, 8). And on the VoD Filmin platform, during the fifteen days following the festival, a selection of the films of this edition will be shown.

• From 13 November to 19 November
• CCCB
• Montalegre, 5 08001 Barcelona
• alternativa.cccb.org

• L’Alternativa
• Advance ticket sales (5 movies + 1 online viewing on Filmin) until November 12th, 18€