Next Wednesday, 26th April, the 19th edition of the Play-Doc, Tui International Film Festival, will commence. An edition that remains faithful to the beginning of the event, which, throughout its history, has stood out for presenting retrospectives for the first time in Spain of cult filmmakers and truly legendary figures in cinema, and especially for recovering, rediscovering and vindicating many other forgotten, censored or largely unknown names. A programme that once again takes the pulse of the most recent contemporary international cinema, without losing sight of the most representative films produced in Galicia over the last year.
A total of thirteen titles make up the Galician film programme of this 19th edition, among which three are world premieres. Circo Nevada directed by Manuel Valcárcel is a feature-length documentary that revolves around the experiences of the members of a circus during the time they spent in Monforte de Lemos due to the pandemic. For the first time, we will also be able to see Al otro lado del mar by Eloy Domínguez Serén and Samuel Moreno Álvarez in which two friends and comrades in filmmaking maintain a three-year filmic correspondence between Galicia and Colombia. Also in its international premiere, Devociones directed by Ángel Montero and María Serna, is a more experimental work, in which the directors propose a sensory journey through the mirror in search of healing landscapes.
This year’s edition also saw a notable rise in the number of female documentary filmmakers in the programme. Filmmakers who, with varied proposals and diverse points of view, deal with subjects they feel challenged by. On 30′ 70 60′ 120, Marta Valverde talks in the first person, about the precariousness of types of work that young people face. Paula Iglesias and Marta Gómez in their film Hondarrak (En ruinas), explore the role of women as eternal carers. Ariadna Gil portrays a rural woman in Espantos y desencantos. With her short film Habitar, Anxos Fazáns reflects on the construction of our identities through an intimate portrait of transgender people. While Laura and Coral Piñeiro denounce, in Na pel da memoria the suffering of many women during Franco’s dictatorship.
The most experimental proposals of the cinema produced in Galicia come from Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado with their film Bloom, a more ethnographic approach that tells the story of San Borondón, a mythical island that appears and disappears in the Canary Islands archipelago. In Serpari by Iria Sanjurjo, we witness one of the most peculiar rituals in the area of L’Aquila, dedicated to snakes and the abbot San Domenico, and in Ecotone, Enar De Dios makes a critique, in the form of an audiovisual essay, of contemporary forms of capitalism.
Completing this programme, A Foreign Song directed by César Souto which comes to Play-Doc after winning the award for best Spanish film and best director at the last edition of the Gijón Film Festival (FICX), and Los Saldos, directed by Raúl Capdevila which shows the industrial evolution and the deterioration of life in ‘España vaciada’ (hollowed-out Spain).