Actor Sergi López (1965)

The comedy film, Rifkin’s Festival (2020), is the work of writer and director Woody Allen as an American-Spanish-Italian collaboration. Mort Rifkin, a snobby elderly film critic from New York, confides in his therapist about recent events in his life. He reluctantly accompanies his much younger wife Sue to a film festival in San Sebastián. She works for Philippe, a French director whose ordinary and unoriginal anti-war movie is being hailed as a masterpiece by all but Mort. As Sue and Philippe’s relationship turns flirtatious, Mort becomes increasingly envious. His unsettling thoughts and fears are ...

Ismael (2013), a Spanish drama directed by Marcelo Piñeyro, follows the journey of eight-year-old Ismael Tchou as he travels by train from Madrid to Barcelona. Initially, fleeing home in search of Felix Ambros, whom he believes is his father, Ismael’s only clue is a letter addressed to his mother and an apartment’s location. Upon arriving at the address, Ismael is greeted not by his father but by Nora, an elegant woman in her fifties who turns out to be Felix’s mother and therefore Ismael’s grandmother. This unexpected encounter sets off a chain of events as each character grapples with their ...

Adapted from Dominique Mainard’s novel Leur histoire, the French drama film Some Kind of Blue (2005) was brought to life by Alain Corneau. The story follows Clara, a woman who works at a bird shop and is sole caretaker of her deaf-mute daughter Anna. Despite her concerns for Anna, who has never spoken, Clara herself is unable to read and write due to a traumatic incident in her past. After her beloved grandmother Baba was attacked while reading to her, Clara developed a strong aversion to learning literacy skills. As a ...