Andrés Luque

The amazing story of Cifesa, a mythical film production company founded in Valencia by the Casanova family that managed to dominate the box office during the turbulent times of the Second Spanish Republic, the carnage of the Civil War and the hardships of the long post-war period and Franco's dictatorship — and survive until the sixties, when Spain was timidly beginning to change.

A new reading of the historical period that began with the reign of the Catholic Monarchs (1479-1516) and the discovery of America (1492), as well as an analysis of its undeniable influence on the subsequent evolution of the history of Spain and the world.

An account of the life and work of genius Spanish writer Francisco Umbral (1932-2007), author of almost 200 books and more than 1000 articles; as well as an analysis of his both hieratic and strambotic public figure and certain unresolved personal enigmas in order to find an answer to what a real dandy is in this modern and convoluted times.

Spain, April 14, 1931. The Second Republic is born. From the beginning, the writer Miguel de Unamuno is considered one of the ethical pillars of the new regime. Five years later, on December 31, 1936, a few months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Unamuno dies at his home in Salamanca, capital of the rebel side, led by General Francisco Franco, and main center of dissemination of its propaganda apparatus.

An account of the personal life and genial work of Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920), the greatest Spanish writer of 19th century, a journalist, a novelist, and a playwright; a free independent man who narrated with a firm hand the history of the most troubled era of modern Spain, both that of the rulers and powerful characters and that of the humble people.

Spain, 1519. Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese navigator in the service of King Charles I, undertakes, at the command of five ships, a commercial expedition to the Moluccas. The story of the first circumnavigation of the world, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1522.

She appeared when Spain was waking up from a long post-war period and crying with melodramas starring children, a child prodigy unlike any other; a girl who, in time, would become a symbol of freedom and a total artist. Actress, singer, friend, lover. This is the story of Ana Belén.

Waffen-SS officer Otto Skorzeny (1908-75) became famous for his participation in daring military actions during World War II. In 1947 he was judged and imprisoned, but he escaped less than a year later and found a safe haven in Spain, ruled with an iron hand by General Francisco Franco. What did he do during the many years he spent there?

Born in Campo de Criptana, a small village in the Spanish region of La Mancha, Sara Montiel (1928-2013) conquered Mexico, Hollywood, and the hearts of people. The recognition of an unparalleled professional career, an intimate dialogue with a tireless worker who took the stage at the age of twelve and never got off. A movie star who seduced millions of viewers around the world, a singer who reinvented a musical genre, a woman who broke the mold…

For three and a half centuries, from the same day that Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) applied his last brushstroke to the canvas, the enigma of “Las meninas, o La familia de Felipe IV” (1656) has not been deciphered. The secret story of a painting unveiled as if it was the resolution of a perfect crime.

An account of the childhood and youth of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, and how the hard experiences he lived during these formative years led him to write and publish his first major work when he was only 26 years old.

In 2012, awarded filmmaker Hernán Zin suffered an accident in Afghanistan that changed his life forever. The traumas he had been accumulating during 20 years of war reporting suddenly imploded. He began suffering depression, loneliness and self-destructive behaviors. Searching for answers of what happened to him, Hernán Zin decided to interview other journalists. He asked them about their traumas, their losses, their fears and their families. DYING TO TELL is the first documentary film ever made about trauma in war reporters. It is a brutal and torn portrait of war, and a tribute to those who risk their lives for the world to be informed. —Contramedia Films

Spanish Civil War, May, 1938. Four villages in Castellón, Benassal, Albocàsser, Ares del Maestrat and Vilar de Canes, were bombed from the sky and ravaged. 38 people died. Inhabitants never knew for sure who piloted the planes responsible for such atrocity, although the rebel propaganda attributed the act to the republican side. Now, 80 years later, the truth is finally exposed.

The personal and professional story, told in first person, of Spanish actress Carmen Maura, director Pedro Almodóvar's first muse and a brilliant artist in her own right.

Advertising surrounds us. It is part of our lives, our memory and our culture: it is a pure reflection of our society. However, those who think and create ads are unknown people. Playing with the mechanisms of publicity as a narrative resource, we enter this medium through Spain's best creative director: Toni Segarra.

An account of the life and work of the Spanish poet Luis García Montero; a journey through his experiences, his mentors, his influences and his contact with other artists, both from the literary world and from other disciplines.

The octogenarian Angono Mba recalls the expedition in which he worked as porter for the Spanish filmmaker Manuel Hernández Sanjuán who, between 1944 and 1946, traveled through Spanish Guinea documenting life in the colony as he obsessively searched for a mysterious lake.

María del Puy Alvarado, through her production company Malvalanda, faced the proposal to produce a documentary about the writer Antonio Muñoz Molina, in one of the programmes offered by Televisión Española to give an account of the great creators of Spanish culture and in Spanish. On this occasion, the approach to the Andalusian writer reveals a rich portrait that comes from the writer's self-reflection who, in many moments, is spurred by the interlocution of his life partner and also writer, Elvira Lindo.

Spain, 1914. A group of women fight with courage for their rights in a society that condemns them to mediocrity. In 1927, their most advantaged students free themselves from the intellectual, social and physical corset that constricted them to a role as wives and mothers, so they will participate without complexes in the cultural life of Spain from then until the disaster of the Spanish Civil War.

A vindication of the role of the technicians and artists who made spaghetti western genre possible, and a walk through the landscapes that made it possible to recreate in Spain, mainly in the desert of Almería, hundreds of adventures set in the remote American Far West.

Joan Manuel Serrat fled to Mexico when Franco ordered his persecution. In Argentina and Chile, his commitment against military regimes is still remembered. Joaquín Sabina arrived later. His poetry bewitched the audience. In Argentina, he is a tango singer as much as a rocker; in Mexico, the mariachis sing their songs. The former is a symbol, a venerated figure; the latter is a “cuate,” as they say in Mexico, a buddy with whom you can always count.

The history of how the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art of Cuenca was created. In the mid-1950s, the Spanish collector and painter Fernando Zóbel de Ayala (1924-84) becomes fascinated by the young generation of Spanish abstract artists, so he begins to collect their works to show them to the public in Toledo. Until Gustavo Torner, a young forest engineer interested in art, proposes him to visit his city, Cuenca.

The story of Enrique Herreros (1903-1977), cartoonist, advertiser, poster designer, talent manager, actor, producer and filmmaker, and the most daring of mountaineers; the man who, along with his companions from the so-called “other Generation of '27,” brought Hollywood to Madrid's Gran Vía, turning a grey and sinister post-war city into the capital of an incipient and ambitious cultural industry.

Documentary about the history of experimental cinema in Spain. FRAGMENTS is a historical survey of “the other” Spanish Cinema — films that brazenly explored their artistic, poetic and conceptual potential. Spanish experimental cinema can be glimpsed in a series of important yet isolated events that FRAGMENTS compiles through various firsthand accounts, film excerpts and documents. For the first time in Spain, a documentary brings together the most relevant of a cinema that is slowly losing its invisibility.

Sebas es un delincuente de poca monta recién salido de prisión que decide buscar empleo en una pequeña empresa de Galicia. Pero no por vocación desde luego, sino porque algo le dice que el dueño de la empresa, Regueira, no se ha pagado el Jaguar con cangrejos. Cuando por fin es contratado, Regueira comprueba muy rápidamente que aquel joven de dientes mellados tiene agallas y decide convertirlo en su ayudante. Pero, Sebastián, tan listo y tan despiadado, ignora que forma parte de un juego que le supera...