The Blue Star

A troubled Zaragoza rock singer in the 1990s, Mauricio Aznar flies to Argentina with nothing but a backpack to escape his drug-habit, messy personal life, and creative frustrations. Heading to the far north, he becomes fascinated with a veteran musician, Don Carlos, unheralded outside his own local community, who takes the younger man under his wing to teach him the art of chacareras, zambas and vidalas. It’s a journey of musical kinship and spiritual reawakening, beautifully told by one of the most exciting emerging filmmakers in Spain. Highly recommended, this is one of three outstanding films about musicians in this year’s New Spanish Cinema line up (the others being Saturn Return and The Flamenco Guitar of Yerai Cortes).

Macipe’s film is built like a braid in which fiction passes through document and document through fiction, creating a path in which cinema and life will meet in the end.

Elsa Fernández-Santos, El Pais

Javier Macipe surprises us with this meticulous reconstruction of the life of a musician that is also an exciting fable about creation, friendship and a good death.

Luis Martinez, El Mundo