The D'A Barcelona Film Festival opens its thirteenth edition this Thursday with an extensive program that will show a total of 115 films -49 of them directed by women-, 10 world premiere feature films, 17 Spanish premieres (four of them short ) and 21 first works distributed among the CCCB, Aribau multiplex, the Filmoteca de Catalunya and the Zumzeig.
The competition dedicated to the best independent and contemporary auteur cinema raises the curtain with Chronicle of an Ephemeral Love, a romantic comedy by French director Emmanuel Mouret starring Vincent Macaigne and Sandrine Kiberlain. Filmmaker and actor will attend the festival to present the film to the Barcelona public.
The one in charge of bringing the closure on April 2 will be what promises to be one of the Spanish films of the year: 20,000 species of bees, directorial debut Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, winner of the Biznaga de Oro at the Malaga festival and the Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Performance for 9-year-old Sofía Otero.
Among the titles that can be seen in the coming days are the new from veteran Paul Schrader, The Master Gardener, starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver; El trio en E flat, by Rita Azevedo, a meta-cinematographic film based on the play of the same title written by Eric Rohmer; Fuego fatuo, by João Pedro Rodrigues, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Seville Festival; When the Waves Are Gone, by Filipino Lav Diaz, and Tchaikovsky's Woman, by Russian Kirill Serebrennikov. The latest works by Hong Sang-soo (Walk up), Mark Cousins (March on Rome), Ursula Meier (La ligne), Christophe Honoré (Dialogue with Life) and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (The Great Youth) will also be screened, among others.
From the Argentine production company El Pampero Cine come two of the moviegoers' events of the year: Clorindo Testa by Mariano Llinás, the co-writer of Argentina 1985, and the new film by Laura Citarella, Trenque Lauquen, an overflowing 250 minutes about disappearances and mysterious secrets that shocked his passage through Venice and San Sebastián.
Among the newest names in auteur cinema at D'A 2023 it is worth mentioning the Romanian film set in the 1970s, Metronom, by Alexandru Belc, winner of the Best Director award in the Un Certain Regard section at the last Cannes festival; the drama about homosexuality Anhell69, by Colombian director Theo Montoya, winner of the Venice Biennale Critics' Week Grand Prize, and Human Flowers of Flesh, by German director Helena Wittmann, one of the key names in contemporary European cinema since He stood out with Drift (2017).
The national productions include Un sol radiant, directed by a group of five filmmakers from Pompeu Fabra University (Mònica Cambra, Ariardna Fortuny, Claudia García de Dios, Lucía Herrera and Mònica Tort); Misión a Marte, by Amat Vallmajor, winner of a special mention in Gijón and award for the best film in Novos Cinemas; Sonoma (Le film, pas le spectacle), by Xavi Lozano and Albert Pons, where the company La Veronal starts the process of creation and rehearsal of its new piece of contemporary dance, inspired by Buñuel and surrealism; and the documentary Alteritats, by Alba Cros (co-director of Las amigas de Àgata) and Nora Haddad.
The protagonist of Focus D'A 2023 will be the English director Joanna Hogg, whose latest film, The Eternal Daughter, starring Tilda Swinton, will be released. For the first time, the D'A Prize will be awarded in recognition of the career of a filmmaker committed to authorship and independent cinema, a distinction that falls this year to French director Céline Sciamma, director of the acclaimed Portrait of a Woman on Fire and Petite maman. Sciamma will give a master class aimed at film students but open to the public on Monday, March 27 at 12:30 p.m. at the Mirador del CCCB.
There will also be a special screening of the restored copy of Lou Ye's Suzhou River, the legendary 2000 film that won the Tiger Award in Rotterdam. And the third original series of Filmin, Selftape, produced by Filmax and of which the first two chapters can be seen, will premiere.
The festival will award 36,000 euros in prizes. On this occasion, 1,000 euros for the best short film in the competitive section 'Un Impulso Colectivo-Shorts' are added to the usual awards.
Likewise, the contest presents a series of Audiovisual Concerts with the Catalan premiere of two proposals produced by the Spanish Film Library. On the one hand, J from Los Planetas will present the show Plena Pausa live where they put music to selected pieces from the unpublished archive of Iván Zulueta, the mythical director of Arrebato. On the other hand, Refree will put music to La aldea maldita (Florián Rey, 1930), considered the first masterpiece of Spanish cinema.
The audiovisual concert proposal is completed by Somatic Suspension by composer Hara Alonso and visual artist Alba G. Corral and Apparition, by Scottish artist Ela Orleans with an immersive sound and visual collage that mixes found footage and Bernard Herrmann soundtracks.
