2022 has been a year of cinema. Of good cinema. The sector has faced the path of recovery after the blow of the coronavirus pandemic with an avalanche of titles, many of which had been stored in a drawer waiting for the reopening of the rooms. The most spectacular blockbuster has coexisted with high-quality independent productions and Spanish cinema has produced its best harvest.
Nothing more and nothing less than thirteen years has taken the Canadian director to release the sequel to the highest grossing film in the history of cinema. The visual and technological spectacle of this 190-minute blockbuster shines brighter in a Pandora blue universe that speaks of family ties, diversity and respect for nature. Avatar: The Sense of Water is destined to burst the box office as its predecessor did.
Another long-awaited sequel, that of Top Gun, has achieved critical and public acclaim and has become the biggest success of Tom Cruise's career, who returns as the intrepid flight instructor Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell.
The National Board of Review, made up of filmmakers, academics and professionals from the film industry, has chosen it as the best film of the year.
The Japanese director won the Oscar for best international film with the adaptation to the big screen of a short story by Haruki Murakami. With car rides as the main setting, this drama about love, grief and betrayal stars a prestigious actor and theater director who agrees to stage Uncle Vanya at a Hiroshima festival after not being able to recover from an emotional blow.
Sorogoyen has grabbed 17 Goya nominations with a horror thriller set in a Galician village and based on a real event that he has written hand in hand with Isabel Peña. In As bestas he raises the tension to the maximum through the neighborhood disagreements between a French couple and the Santa brothers (terrifying Luis Zahera and Diego Anido).
The Argentine abandons the provocation of his previous films to describe in his most personal and accessible work a painful drama about the decline of an elderly couple.
The passion for volcanoes united the French couple Katia and Maurice Krafft, who traveled the planet filming these erupting mountains, especially in the 1970s, until they died in a pyroclastic flow on Mount Unzen in June 1991. Sara Dosa masterfully portrays the passionate three-way romance of the Krafts with lava in this documentary that won the award for best film at DocsBarcelona in the past and the award for best documentary editing at Sundance.
Siân Heder's feel good movie that covers the French film The Bélier Family won the Oscar for best film with an emotional story centered on Ruby (Emilia Jones), the daughter of deaf adults and the only hearing person in her family. When she joins her high school choir club, she discovers her gift for singing.
After surprising us in 2018 with Girl, about a trans girl who wants to be a dancer, the young Belgian director thrills again with this tragic friendship between two young friends who aspires to the Golden Globe for best foreign film.
Filled with pain, beautiful songs and many feelings on the surface, in Belle the Japanese director offers his particular vision of Beauty and the Beast transferred to the virtual universe.
The Scottish filmmaker's debut feature has raved about the indie circuit with a largely autobiographical work that explores the relationship between a thirty-something father and his eleven-year-old daughter during a vacation at a resort in Turkey in the late 1990s.
It seemed like a small movie. But Alauda Ruiz de Azúa's first film stood out from the very beginning when it was selected to participate in the Berlin Festival.
Five little wolves demystifies motherhood, delves into family relationships without ambiguity and has the outstanding performances of Laia Costa and Susi Sánchez. The film has achieved unanimous applause from critics.
The British director moved with this film made with his childhood memories and shot in black and white. Belfast tells the story of Buddy, a boy from an English and Protestant family who lives in Northern Ireland in the early 1960s when violence breaks out. The film garnered seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
Gary meets Alana and all it takes is a wonderful opening shot for him to decide that he's going to marry her. He doesn't have it easy, because Gary is only 16 and the girl is a little older. But little by little he manages to involve her in her crazy plans and perhaps he will fall in love with her, because in that Los Angeles of the 70s that Paul Thomas Anderson portrays, everything is possible.
An emotional Carla Simón raised the Golden Bear in February after seducing the Berlinale jury. Alcarràs, a rural film that navigates between drama, comedy and social protest, was shot with non-professional actors and has been the most successful Spanish film of the year. It still has a long way to go because Alcarràs is shortlisted to compete at the Oscars for best international film.
The Argentine dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla left a bloody legacy of death and torture. The Prosecutor's Office managed to bring the leaders of that cruel regime to trial and jail.
Santiago Miter recovers that judgment in a film that is more than celebrated, because it narrates some very hard events with a touch of sense of humor. The excellent performances by Ricardo Darín and Peter Lanzani are another attraction of this essential film.
Baz Luhrmann showed that the musical can be done in another way with Moulin Rouge. This year, he has returned to his old ways with this Elvis Presley biopic where the unforgettable songs of the mythical “white with a black voice” singer shine in style, just like his protagonist, Austin Butler, a true discovery for the musical genre.
Alberto Rodríguez has contributed to this excellent harvest of Spanish cinema in 2022 with Modelo 77, a prison film that also includes a piece of the history of late-Franco Spain through the story of how life was lived in the country's prisons at that time and, specifically, in the Barcelona Model.
Miguel Herrán and Javier Gutiérrez star in the film that was shot in the already deactivated prison in the Catalan capital.
From India came one of the most remarkable titles of the year. The last film is the story of the first time that Samay, a nine-year-old boy, goes to the cinema. The boy's crush on the seventh art is of such magnitude that little Samay will overcome all obstacles: poverty, family misunderstanding, difficulties accessing education... to achieve his dream of becoming a filmmaker. And yes, the film, which won at the 2021 Seminci, has a lot to do with autobiography.
"I have a disease that only women suffer from and that makes them housewives." The event is the gritty story of a girl's repeated attempts to abort in France in the 1960s. A girl who wants to study. That young woman is Annie Ernaux, on whose autobiographical novel the film is based. Ernaux has just received the Nobel Prize for Literature. And The event took the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival last year.
Unlike the Swedish, Finnish cinematography is little known in Spain. In 2016, Juho Kuosmanen managed to break the barrier of this ignorance with The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki. This year, the Finnish director has given the public, including the Spanish, a little gem, Compartment number 6. A young student shares the cabin of the train on a long journey between Helsinki and a remote area of Russia with a rude miner. The girl goes from the fear and contempt that the man provokes in her to start a relationship similar to a friendship that opens the doors of self-knowledge.
