Now in its fourth year, the Festival of New Spanish Cinema started Sept. 26 with No habrá paz para los malvados (No Rest for the Wicked in English).
For the first time in its history, the festival is held at the ByTowne theatre.
Juan Claudio de Ramón Jacob-Ernst, Cultural Counsellor for the Spanish embassy, was there to start off the first of five movies screened during the festival.
He explained how the festival found a new home at the ByTowne theatre:
“The deal is that we buy the distribution rights and they don’t charge us for the rental and they keep the door,” Jacob-Ernest said.
“It’s a win-win situation, they don’t lose money. We spend some money . . . and we profit from this wonderful cinema, this much beloved cinema of your community.”
The first movie of the five-week event, No habrá paz para los malvados, opened the festival on a dark, heroic note. The film follows a rum-drinking cigarette-smoking policeman and his covert investigation into a Colombian gang.
The movie was awarded five Goya prizes in its home country, including the one for best picture. The Goya prize is Spain’s top film award.
“Spain is a country with a lot of culture and arts and we want to reach out to the Canadian public. Cinema is one of the most popular arts, thus one of our landmark activities is the New Spanish Film Festival,” Jacob-Ernst said.
This year, the lineup of movies spans over many genres.
“We have a wide variety of movies, we have a noir police investigation, we have romance, we have a surreal social portrait of Sevilla, we have a story of the post-war in Catalonia and we have a terror film,” Jacob-Ernst said.
The next movie to be shown will be Carmina or Blow Up, which garnered attention in Spain for being the first Spanish movie released simultaneously in theatres and on DVD, according to Variety Magazine.
Moving forward, the festival’s organizers are looking to broaden the audience.
“We’re planning to expand to Toronto and Montreal next year,” Jacob-Ernst said.
