World Premiere
A documentary/diary film that focuses on one of the directors, Álex Mena, who journeys to her grandmother’s village looking for a closure never realized after she died. This is a beautiful farewell letter that explores the symbiotic relationship between memory and place, and our evolving perception of love after a death. The film poses as many questions as it answers about life’s transient nature and our journey through it, all framed by the minute details of the village and surroundings and a mix of voice-over thoughts and conversations.
Community Partner
Spain
2022
In Spanish with English subtitles
Featured in:
International Shorts: Personal Journeys
The films in this shorts program are all about discovery. Beautiful and thought-provoking voyages of internal and external discovery that honour relations and history, while encountering stimuli that promote a new understanding of self.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Köln 75
The true story behind the greatest solo concert in jazz history, this is Keith Jarrett's legendary 1975 Köln Concert — as organized by 18-year-old rebel music promoter Vera Brandes. Fun, inventive and feminist, it's the Bend It Like Beckham of jazz films.
La Belle at the Movies + Apostles of Cinema
Cecilia Zoppelletto's lyrical documentary examines the fate of cinephilia in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital city, currently without a single operating cinema. + Apostles of Cinema (Tanzania, 17 min)
Wisdom of Happiness
An audience with the Dalia Lama, who, at 90, looks back on his life and shares the tenets of Buddhism as a practical guide to surviving the 21st Century with joy and compassion.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
Credits
Producer
Andrea Gautier
Screenwriter
Álex Mena
Cinematography
Almudena Sánchez
Editor
Maia De Zan
Directors
Carmen Jiménez
Carmen Jiménez is a screenwriter and director who has developed shows for Suma Content, Netflix, and Legendary, among others, and is currently working on a British/Spanish series with producer Tanya Seghatchian (The Crown). She is the writer of the Sony International feature Adiós (2019) and the US/Portugal TV show Vanda. Carmen has directed several short films with successful international festival runs, and was awarded by the Directors Guild of America, among others.
Álex Mena
Álex Mena is a photographer and designer with a multitude of individual and collective exhibitions to her credit. She has been an assistant to the photographer and activist Angélica Dass, and manager and coordinator of fairs and exhibitions at the Elvira González Gallery in Madrid, among other activities related to the world of art. She currently combines her work as a UX/UI designer with the development of her last two projects, Hieratic White and Before Birth.