Not that it matters, but this fascinating, highly acclaimed (and Goya-winning) movie is a thinly disguised history of 90s indie rockers Los Planetas, a Granada grunge outfit who cited the Velvet Underground as inspiration. The movie kicks off (a little like The Blue Star) with the band in crisis after one hit album and a disappointing followup. The bassist (also the singer’s girlfriend) is quitting, they need a new drummer, and the lead guitarist is permanently high. His best and oldest friend, the creative spark for the band, the singer is more or less to blame for all this chaos. It’s the push and pull between these friends which makes the movie so compelling; each of them has his or her perspective. And it won’t be the last time that turbulence produces great art.
Lacuesta, one of the most interesting Spanish directors, cast real life musicians in the lead roles, and the film paints an entirely convincing picture of band life: rehearsals, business meetings, touring excess, egos and insecurities in constant flux. Sadly, the director had to finish film directing remotely from his daughter’s hospital bed after she was diagnosed with leukemia.
The astounding feat of directors Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez’s Saturn Return is how it cinematically evokes that intertwined creative and personal turmoil with frantic visual energy and formal audaciousness, refusing to capitulate to any subgenre conventions. From that intoxicating artistic spirit emerges one of the most honest and reinvigorating music biopics in years, a work unconcerned with sanitizing the image of its deeply flawed subjects as it entangles viewers in their self-destructive, poetic and ultimately redemptive battle against their worst impulses.
Carlos Aguilar, Variety
The extraordinary Segundo premio takes the form of a visual vinyl record so that the needle jumps from track to track, from gaze to gaze, as if John Cassavetes had decided to reinterpret Husbands with the codes of indie music, turning the camera on the faces of a generation that feeds on its contradictions, that oscillates between its Granadan silences and its prodigious spontaneity, that tries to reconcile loyalty to friends with boundless ambition… The B side is the most important: it’s the music, the love, and the rage that ripped through it in a rehearsal space or a recording studio, the music that, like a lightning bolt, pierces the viewer’s experience.
Sergi Sanchez, Fotogramas
Saturn Return not only pays tribute to Los Planetas; It also captures the essence of an era when music had the power to change lives.
Juan Pablo Russo, escribiendocine
Film of the year.
El Mundo
Isaki Lacuesta & Pol Rodríguez
Daniel Ibáñez, Cristalino, Stéphanie Magnin
Spain
2024
In Spanish with English subtitles
Best Director (Goya Awards); Best Film, Best Director, and Best Editing (Malaga Film Festival)
Book Tickets
Monday January 12
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits
Screenwriter
Isaki Lacuesta, Fernando Navarro
Cinematography
Takuro Takeuchi
Editor
Javi Frutos
Original Music
Ylia
Production Design
Pepe Domínguez
Also in This Series
This year’s New Spanish Cinema is packed with an exceptionally strong line-up — award-winning cinema, an Opening Gala featuring tapas and wine, and a flamenco-inspired VIFF Live.
The Blue Star
In crisis, a popular singer quits Spain to backpack in Argentina. There he comes under the spell of a veteran musician, who teaches him the art of chacareras, zambas and vidalas. It's a journey of musical kinship and spiritual reawakening.
Forastera
In this mysterious and subtle coming of age drama, teenager Cata is soaking up the sun, smoking furtive cigarettes, and enjoying a summer break with her grandparents and her younger sis in Mallorca. That is, until Cata's beloved abuela collapses...
Afternoons of Solitude
Pacification director Albert Serra turns his unflinching gaze on the subject of bullfighting, and in particular the famous young matador Andrés Roca Rey. The film challenges us to look its subject square in the eye and draw our own conclusions.
The Executioner
Regularly cited as the greatest Spanish film ever made, Berlanga's masterpiece is a pitch black comedy about an undertaker lined up by the state executioner to marry his beautiful daughter -- but he'll also have to inherit the old man's job.
The Flamenco Guitar of Yerai Cortés + Por Derecho (On Their Own Right) Live
Winner of the Goya Award for Best Documentary, this is an exquisite and surprisingly intimate portrait of the brilliant young guitarist Yerai Cortés, preceded by an hour of passionate flamenco music, song and dance performed by Por Derecho.
Saturn Return
This fascinating, highly acclaimed movie is a thinly disguised history of 90s indie rockers Los Planetas, a Granada grunge outfit who cited the Velvet Underground as inspiration. It's one of the best rock movies in years.
8
The always stylish, idiosyncratic Basque auteur Julio Medem is back with one of his most ambitious films (and our closing night gala), a sweeping historical romance in eight chapters, spanning eight decades in Spanish history from the 1930s to the present day.