1 - Dogs: Submissive and obedient animals
2 - Hogs: Dirty and wicked animals
Food, glorious food! Some of the most sumptuous and involving films revolve around that most common of acts: eating. 18 MEALS is an omnibus film of criss-crossing stories divided into three segments; breakfast, lunch and dinner. Jorge Coira's debut feature, shot over nine days in Santiago de Compostela has enough tasty portions to please audiences. Amongst Coira's expansive ensemble are aging street musician Edu, a pair awaking from a one-night stand, a businessman visiting his closeted homosexual brother and a lonely housewife, Sol. Victor and Sol are two of 18 MEALS' most fascinating characters as they each hide something - his sexuality, her depression - from those around them. Best of all is Pedro Alsono as Vladimir, a local celebrity actor who makes a meal for a mystery woman who never arrives. Who hasn't gone to a lot of trouble to do something extra special for someone just to have it go unappreciated?
Vitoria, Basque Country, Spain, March 3rd, 1976. After several months of protests demanding decent working conditions, representatives of struggling workers call for a general strike. In the church of San Francisco, in the working class neighborhood of Zaramaga, thousands of workers fill the temple in assembly. Outside, many more people gather and, in the middle, about a hundred heavily armed police officers wait to act.
Anxo returns to his home village in the Galician countryside. There, he is greeted with concern by the victorious and the defeated, who see in him the danger of diving back into their silenced memories.
This is a tense and intense 24-hour account of three men's lives, three befuddled mates that walk through live in chaos, through repressed and misleading sex, while closing doors and throwing the keys away, as if they wished to leave everything behind, walking towards their own perdition.
A rebellious youth sentenced to a reformatory for robbing a bakery rises through the ranks of the institution through his prowess as a long distance runner. During his solitary runs, reveries of his life and times before his incarceration lead him to re-evaluate his privileged status as a prized athlete.
When Amador Coro gets out of prison for having provoked a fire, nobody is waiting for him. He returns to his home town, a small village hidden in the mountains of rural Galicia, to live with his elder mother, Benedicta, and three cows. Life goes on calmly, following the rhythm of the nature. Until the night when a fire devastates the region.
The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.
A small village in Huelva, Andalusia, Spain, 1936. Higinio and Rosa have been married only for a few months when the Civil War breaks out. Higinio, being afraid of possible reprisals from the rebel faction, decides to use a hole dug in his own house as a temporary hideout.
Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he's left with a major problem to solve.
A young man arrives at the last hometown of painter Vincent van Gogh to deliver the troubled artist's final letter and ends up investigating his final days there.
After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.
A story of love and obsession during the Spanish Civil War
David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.
In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.
