Documentary movies

A reflection on the concept of invisibility, narrated by women who clean public spaces in Mexico City. Combining documentary, fiction and still photography, the film is an intimate mosaic of testimonies and experiences that highlight the precariousness of work in the cleaning industry, in a world where subcontracting rules.

“Coming to Movistar F*cks News” takes us behind the scenes of an unprecedented event, showcasing the emotion, chaos and humanity of its creators, Camilo Pardo and Camilo Sánchez. As they prepare to fill the Movistar Arena with their irreverent show, F*cks News, the documentary reveals the balance between their meticulous preparation and creative chaos. It highlights the backstage moments, the energy of the audience and the surprises that make this event a cultural phenomenon.

La Salsa Vive is a vibrant cinematic exploration of Afro-Cuban music's history, tracing its roots from New York's lively streets to Cali, Colombia, now the global salsa capital.

Pupi is an Argentine refugee and former member of the ERP in the 1970s who has lived in Amsterdam since 1978. The documentary explores his personal story through themes such as truth and memory, democracy, migration, and exile.

During the quarantine in 2020, the two friends Mariano Llinás and Matías Piñeiro sent each other video letters – 8 in total, 4 each of them – to create a compilation of ideas, thoughts and exchanges commissioned by Sergi Álvarez Riosalido for La Casa Encendida (Madrid). Llinás is in Argentina and Piñeiro is in New York, and they begin to order each other portraits of places, reflections on artists, ideas on cinema.

Faced with a lack of prosecution of those accused of crimes against humanity committed during Argentina’s military dictatorship, family members and descendants of the country’s estimated 30,000 disappeared took action. In the mid-1990s, they began gathering outside of accused perpetrators’ homes and workplaces to publicly shame them and raise awareness about the government’s systematic and brutal targeting of its people — and how it had gone unpunished. The human rights group HIJOS (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetfulness and Silence) led and labeled this direct-action style of protest “escrache,” or exposure.

Juana, Mar, and Eduardo tell their stories of abuse.

As the author of one of the most influential novels in Latin American literature, Paradiso (1966), the Cuban José Lezama Lima is considered a major figure in his country. In this documentary, the director and writer Ernesto Fundora, carries out a study on the author's life through the testimonies of a long list of writers, artists and personalities close to him. The result is a film that explores his work, but also pays a heartfelt tribute to his immeasurable figure.

Rember Yahuarcani is an indigenous artist from the Uitoto Nation who lives in Lima, Peru. From his clan, the White Heron, only two families remain in Peru. Rember's paintings are inspired by the stories his grandmother Martha told him before she died. However, he has never dived into the darkest part of his nation’s history: the indigenous massacre during the rubber boom. Martha is a survivor of the horror and she speaks to Rember in dreams guiding him in a spiritual journey back to the jungle. He first visits his parents, who are also artists, in the Peruvian jungle. And finally, he sails to La Chorrera, in Colombia, where he confronts the past and meets other members of his clan.

A B-roll behind-the-scenes featurette providing insight into Pain and Glory’s production, with interviews from Almodóvar and Banderas.

The work of taxonomists hides more secrets than can be perceived.

Santa Fe - notes, 2017 - 2019 is a story made up of fragments of landscapes, buildings, voices and objects. It is a film built on the relationship between art and the colony, memory and threat, native peoples and silence.

Ein Qiniya, a small Palestinian village in the West Bank, occupied since 1967. This is where Milena Desse is to make her own enquiries: how can one decipher remaining traces and reconstruct History? How can one shine a light, as they say, on such places? Determined to unfold the layers and work out the creases like so many clues about some buried history, the young director strives like an archaeologist, equipped with a magnifying glass and a camera.

On a journey through the interior of the earth, we learn about the life and dreams of a swiss explorer who searches for caves and underground rivers in a sector marked by violence and armed conflict in Colombia. This underground labyrinth is a metaphor about a dark past, buried deep within the soul, where old war wounds heal with the infinite passage of time.

Ricard Camarena bases his cuisine on Valencia’s local vegetable production. His constant search for harmony between flavours has seduced the critics and crossed borders. Alongside Mari Carmen Bañuls, the brain behind the management of their restaurants, the two form an indissoluble team which have overcome great adversity to achieve success, vouched for by two Michelin stars and the recent National Gastronomy Prize. The couple are enjoying their most balanced moment. Balanced? The Covid-19 outbreak has thrown them up against a hitherto unheard-of challenge: to reopen their restaurants with the uncertainty of the “new normal”. Heedless of the pandemic, the vegetable garden continues its natural growth cycle and offers the chef a new horizon of flavours.

The story of José Lezama Lima and his rise as a literary figure in Cuba and his tragic end, alone and silenced in his Havana home.