Patricia García Méndez

Hugo Vartan is an author looking for a juicy story for his next book. He comes across one in the form of the sister of his flatmate's boyfriend, who has been hospitalised in a psychiatric ward for, seemingly, murdering her partner, beheading him with a knife and sticking his head on the steering wheel of her car.

Someone takes a commuter train early in the morning to get to his work place. Extrange things begin to happen - Fellow commuters are just a little too friendly, and that music coming out the speakers is just too, too intense.

A single mother of a leukemia-stricken child is redeemed by the titular positive force in Paco Torres' intriguing debut, "The Magic of Hope." Starting out as a po-faced tale of endurance, pic develops into a convincing, quietly affirmative fable about the transformative power of human goodness. Featuring a searching central performance from Patricia Garcia Mendez and employing a distinctive mix of grit and lyricism working in mutually beneficial counterpoint, pic is far from perfect, but its seriousness of purpose and undertow of emotional truth could be met with applause by fest auds.

Juan Gutiérrez, 44, an electrician, has been unemployed for a long time. He decides to leave his family to go find work in Madrid, believing that in the big city the opportunities will be greater. Once there, he discovers that things are not as he believed. He is an electrician. He doesn't want to clean windshields at stoplights or clean cabarets at dawn. He wants to work as an electrician. Occasionally she meets Andy, a Caribbean mulatto who boasts bulletproof optimism. With his sharp wit, he manages as best he can, trying not to be found by the immigration authorities. Despite the distances, "Gallego" and "Sudaca" become friends.

Pablo hates everything. When Lucia comes into his life, he thinks she's the woman he dreams of, and sees the solution to all his problems. But Lucia, who is rather manipulating, is just what will make Pablo explode. Nobody believes in the ideal couple, not even Pablo's friends, who live all in couples, and all with problems: Between Ariel and Lola there is a professional rivalty they don't know how to cope with; Claudio lives on Natalia, and none of them feels good about it; what's wrong with Alejandro and Beatriz is just the big age difference between them two. Nobody is happy with his partenaire, but everyone will let it be, maybe for conformism, maybe for fear, maybe for lazyness, or maybe because Everything is false.