All programs are free and open to audiences. RSVP is mandatory due to limited seating.
Please select an upcoming program below and click on the RSVP button to view information about the film and reserve your spot. You will receive an automatic email confirmation after registering on the individual film page.
Programs are hosted at the Manarat Al Saadiyat Auditorium.
(Programs dates and times are subject to change.)
Presented in collaboration with the Embassy of Spain
Free Film Screening
Directed by Agustí Villaronga
Spain | 2010 | 108 minutes
In Catalan with English Subtitles
RATING: ( 18+ ) - Suitable for viewers ages 18 and above
Synopsis: The Spanish selection for the 89th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film, Black Bread is set in the war-ravaged Catalan countryside of the early 1940s where a local man is accused of murder and his son sets out to find the truth. Eleven-year-old Andreu stumbles upon a crushed wagon in the underbrush at the foot of a high cliff and witnesses the dying moments of the man and boy inside. When police suspect Andreu’s father of foul play, he goes into hiding and Andreu is sent to live with relatives. There, the frightened boy creates a fantasy life, but is forced to confront a world of adult deception, festering hatreds and the war’s monstrous consequences. Adored by audience and critics alike, Black Bread won an unprecedented of number of prizes, including 9 Goya Awards and 13 Gaudí Awards highlighting not only the quality of the film, but also the mastery of its director, the poignancy of its script, and power of its performances.
Presented in collaboration with the Embassy of Spain
Free Film Screening
(NEW FILM RESTORATION!)
Directed by Víctor Erice
Spain | 1983 | 94 minutes
In Spanish with English Subtitles
Rating ( G ) - General Audiences (all ages admitted)
Synopsis: Ten years after making his mark on Spanish cinema with The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena), Víctor Erice returned to filmmaking with this adaptation of a novella by Adelaida García Morales, which deepens the director’s fascination with childhood, fantasy, and the legacy of his country’s civil war. In the North of Spain, Estrella grows up captivated by her father, a doctor with mystical powers—and by the enigma of his youth in the South, a near-mythical region whose secrets haunt Estrella more and more as time goes on. Though Erice’s original vision also encompassed a section set in the South itself, scenes that were never shot, El Sur remains an experience of rare perfection and satisfaction, drawing on painterly cinematography by José Luis Alcaine to evoke the enchantments of memory and the inaccessible, inescapable mysteries of the past.
Presented in collaboration with Institut français in the UAE and the Embassy of Spain
Free Film Screening
Retour à Ithaque (French title)
Regreso a Ítaca (Spanish title)
Directed by Laurent Cantet
France | 2014 | 92 minutes
In Spanish with English Subtitles
RATING: ( 15+ ) - Suitable for viewers ages 15 and above
Synopsis: On a Havana rooftop terrace at sunset, five fifty-something friends reunite to celebrate the return of Amadeo, a writer who has come back to Cuba after sixteen years of self-imposed exile in Spain. As the night unfolds, the hopes and traumas of the past, the compromises and recriminations of the present and the uncertainties of the future all frame their individual dramas – while they battle to save the friendship which has bound them together since their teenage years. Featuring some of Cuban cinema's greatest stars – including Jorge Perugorria, Isabel Santos and Nestor Jimenez – and marking a collaboration between multi-award-winning director Laurent Cantet and Leonardo Padura Fuentes, winner of Cuba's National Prize for Literature, Return to Ithaca is a compelling, intimate – even cathartic – portrait of a generation brought up on the dream of revolutionary utopia, but which has foundered on the brutal economic conditions of the present day.
Presented by the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi
Free Film Screening
Directed by Alberto Rodríguez
Spain | 2014 | 105 minutes
In Spanish with English Subtitles
RATING: ( 18+ ) - Suitable for viewers ages 18 and above
Synopsis: The Spanish Deep South, 1980. A series of brutal murders of adolescent girls in a remote and forgotten town bring together two disparate characters - both detectives in the homicide division - to investigate the cases. With deep divisions in their ideology, detectives Juan and Pedro must put aside their differences if they are to successfully hunt down a killer who for years has terrorized a community in the shadow of a general disregard for women rooted in a misogynistic past. Marshland swept Spain's Goya Awards, winning 10 prizes including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. As narratively taut as it is richly atmospheric, the film keeps viewers guessing throughout and delivers a brilliant procedural thriller with surprising nuance.
Presented by the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi
Free Film Screening
MUERTE DE UN CICLISTA (original title)
(NEW FILM RESTORATION!)
Directed by Juan Antonio Bardem
Spain | 1955 | 87 minutes
In Spanish with English Subtitles
RATING: ( G ) - General Audiences (all ages admitted)
Synopsis: Upper-class geometry professor Juan and his wealthy, married mistress, Maria José, driving back from a late-night rendezvous, accidentally hit a cyclist, and run. The resulting, exquisitely shot tale of guilt, infidelity, and blackmail reveals the wide gap between the rich and the poor in Spain, and surveys the corrupt ethics of a society seduced by decadence. Juan Antonio Bardem's charged melodrama Death of a Cyclist (Muerte de un ciclista) was a direct attack on 1950s Spanish society under Franco’s rule. Though it was affected by the dictates of censorship, its sting could never be dulled.
Presented by the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi
Free Film Screening
Directed by Icíar Bollaín
Spain, Mexico, France | 2010 | 104 minutes
In Spanish with English Subtitles
RATING: [ 15+ ] - Suitable for viewers ages 15 and above
Synopsis: Tambien la lluvia sets up an intriguing dialogue about Spanish imperialism through incidents taking place some 500 years apart, while examining the personal belief systems of the members of a film crew headed by director Sebastian (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his producer Costa (Luis Tosar) who arrive in Bolivia to make a revisionist film about the conquest of Latin America. Set in February and March of 2000 when real-life protests against the privatization of water rocked the nation, the film reflexively blurs the line between fiction and reality in what Variety calls "a powerful, richly layered indictment of the plight of Latin America's dispossessed." Carlos Aduviri is dynamic as a local who is cast as a 15th century native in the film, but when the make-up and loin cloth come off, he sails into action protesting his community's deprivation of water at the hands of the government. Meanwhile, Gael Garcia Bernal's Idealist film director is relentless pushing ahead against all odds, ignoring the prevailing danger about to disrupt at any moment. Despite the devastation emerging around him, Sebastian seems unable to engage with any emotion over than a dogmatic desire to get his film done.
Presented by the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi
Free Film Screening
(NEW FILM RESTORATION!)
Directed by Carlos Saura
Spain | 1976 | 107 minutes
In Spanish with English Subtitles
RATING: [ PG ] - Parental Guidance is advised
Synopsis: Carlos Saura's touching, thought-provoking and exquisite Cría cuervos ... heralded a turning point in Spain: made while General Franco was on his deathbed, the film melds the personal and the political in a portrait of the legacy of fascism and its effects on a middle-class family (the title derives from the Spanish proverb: “Raise ravens and they’ll peck out your eyes”). Cría cuervos ... centres on an amazing performance by the young actress Ana Torrent (the dark-eyed beauty from The Spirit of the Beehive) as the disturbed eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her two sisters and mourning the death of her mother, played by an ethereal Geraldine Chaplin, whom she conjures as a ghost. Seamlessly shifting between fantasy and reality, the film subtly evokes both the complex feelings of childhood and the struggles of a nation emerging from the shadows. Released when Spain was just coming out of 40 years of Fascist rule it was nominated for a Golden Globe, and won the Grand Prize at Cannes in 1977.
Presented by the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi
Free Film Screening
Directed by Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga
Spain | 2014 | 99 minutes
In Basque with English Subtitles
RATING: [ G ] - General Audiences (all ages admitted)
Synopsis: Ane (Nagore Aranburu) lives a quiet unfulfilled life, trapped in a seemingly loveless marriage, until she suddenly starts to receive bouquets of flowers anonymously, once a week. Meanwhile, Tere (Itziar Aizpuru) wants nothing more than a grandchild, but her only son Beñat (Josean Bengoetxea) and his wife Lourdes (Itziar Ituño) have other plans. A sudden, tragic event jolts all of their lives into a new reality, and flowers start to appear anonymously once again, but this time, instead of passion, they represent an emotional memory. With a deep compassion for their characters, directors Jose Mari Goenaga and Jon Garaño examine the unexpected reverberations of a simple yet charged gesture while reflecting on loss, memory, and missed connections. FLOWERS won the Cine Latino Award at Palm Springs International Film Festival, was an official selection at San Sebastian Film Festival and is Spain’s submission to the Foreign Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards.
Presented by the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi
Free Film Screening
Directed by Carlos Saura
Spain | 2010 | 100 minutes
In Spanish with English Subtitles
RATING: [ G ]
Synopsis: Directed by legendary Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, Flamenco, Flamenco is an evolutionary musical journey through the light, song and dance of a dynamic and alive art form. Beautifully photographed by famed Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and showcasing a powerful new Flamenco through dazzling musical and dance performances by emerging talents, and the greatest living Flamenco masters, this unique musical odyssey reaches beyond the borders of Flamenco and Spanish culture toward a universal artistic expression.
(NEW FILM RESTORATION!)
El ángel exterminador (Original Title)
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Mexico, Spain | 1962 | 93 minutes
In Spanish | English Subtitles | [15+]
Synopsis: Luis Buñuel's savage black comedy is one of the surrealist master’s greatest works, and perhaps his ultimate insult to conventional bourgeois morality. In Buñuel's brilliant film, a group of socialites are invited to a mansion for an elegant dinner party and find themselves mysteriously unable to leave their host’s drawing room at the conclusion of the evening. As the ordeal stretches into hours and then days, their civilized façades crumble under the pressures of confinement, hunger, and squalor, and they gradually revert to barbarism. Made just one year after the director’s international sensation Viridiana, this daring masterpiece, full of eerie comic absurdity, continues Buñuel’s wicked takedown of the rituals and dependencies of the frivolous upper classes.
Chico y Rita (Original Title)
Directed by Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal, Tono Errando
Spain | 2010 | 94 minutes
In Spanish, English, French | English Subtitles | [ 18+ ]
Synopsis: Oscar®-winning director Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, Calle 54) and Spain’s legendary illustrator Javier Mariscal celebrate their passion for the music and culture of Cuba with an epic story of love, passion, and heartbreak. Cuba, 1948. Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and desire unite them as they chase their dreams and each other from Havana to New York to Paris, Hollywood and Las Vegas. With an original soundtrack by legendary Cuban pianist and five-time Grammy®-winning composer Bebo Valdés, Chico & Rita captures a defining moment in the evolution of history and jazz, and features the music of (and animated cameos by) Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Tito Puente, Chano Pozo, and others.
Presented by the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi
Free Film Screening
(NEW FILM RESTORATION!)
El verdugo (Original Title)
Directed by Luis García Berlanga
Spain | 1963 | 92 minutes
In Spanish | English Subtitles | [ G ]
Synopsis: This masterpiece of black humor, beloved in Spain but too little seen elsewhere, threads a scathing critique of Franco-era values through a macabre farce about an undertaker who marries an executioner’s daughter and reluctantly takes over her father’s job so the family can keep their government-allotted apartment. As caustic today as it was in 1963, this early collaboration between Luis García Berlanga and his longtime screenwriter Rafael Azcona is an unerring depiction of what Berlanga called “the invisible traps that society sets up for us.” A furiously funny personal attack on capital punishment, The Executioner evaded the state censors who sought to suppress it, and today is regarded as one of the greatest Spanish films of all time.
