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.

The first dramatic feature by documentary filmmaker Guillermo Galoe, this is a scintillating slice of contemporary neo-realism set among the gitano community in southern Europe's largest shanty town, La Cañada Real.

Join us for tapas, wine, and the West Coast premiere of a sweeping historical epic about the young Miguel de Cervantes, held for ransom in Algiers in 1575 and hitting on his gift for storytelling as a survival tactic.

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...

Winner of five Goya Awards including for Best Film, this is the true story of a frustrated bus driver who hijacks his own bus to draw attention to the neglected shantytown on the outskirts of Barcelona where he made his home in the 1950s.

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.

Vincente came out of the closet late in life. But elects to go back in it when he's sent to a nursing home. Under the influence of his gregarious roommate, he starts to regain some of his old spark...

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.

Writer-director Eva Libertad has made a revealing, compassionate film about the fears and anxieties of a deaf woman (played by Libertad's sister, deaf actress Miriam Garlo) who is about to have a baby.

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.

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.

Laura Weissmahr won the Goya award for Best New Actress for her portrait of Maria in Mar Coll's third feature film, a tense and compelling drama on taboo emotions.

This Goya-winning animated feature is based on the filmmaker's previous documentary, Climate Exodus, following the stories of three women forced into exile by climate change.

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.