Anagnorisis

The rocky desert in southwestern Algeria is the temporary home of about 150,000 refugees from Western Sahara. Goats grazing or the opening of a beauty salon are among the many scenes of everyday life of people who are eagerly awaiting the beginning of the film festival. The observational documentary captures the unwavering love of film in a place that the world has forgotten.

Juan, a seventy-year-old man with senile dementia, shares a room with Manuel, a young sparrow.

On 1976 twenty thousand Spaniards left the last European colony in Africa, and thousands of Saharawi’s are abandoned to their fate. Forty years have gone by and Western Sahara has become a forgotten conflict. This film offers an original point of view: the version of the conflict from the opposition to the regime within the occupying power, Morocco, and the odyssey of a group of young people to achieve these testimonies, while trying to reach the capital of the Occupied Territories, El-Aaiun.

The trajectory of Félix Cuadrado Lomas includes a post-war childhood, a bohemian youth and resistance, and a maturity of recognition when all his generation companions have already disappeared. His painting supposes a reinterpretation of the Castilian landscape, recovering the ethical meaning it acquired for the Generation of 98. The film accompanies the painter for a year, recording the seasonal changes in the landscape, as well as his artistic and creative processes.

Ana returns to the village in summer with the intention of setting up a cinema in the courtyard of an old family house. One day she is working on her project and meets Lucía, an old acquaintance. She hasn't seen her for years but quickly starts to help Ana to make the cinema work properly. The screenings begin as the relationship between Ana and Lucia grows closer. Ana is worried about feeling integrated in the village, while Lucía suggests filming the different neighbours with her video camera so that they can appear in the screenings. The summer goes on and the village is emptying of people, while Ana and Lucía continue filming funny scenes. Soon it will be time for Lucia to leave the village and return to her life in the city, but Ana doesn't want to give up her new way of life in the village.

'Aficionados' is an experimental film that emerges of a collective creation, from the construction of characters. With a screenplay with no dialogues and without treatment, the actors improvised during the recording days. It was shot in the homes and workplaces of the actors, with sequence shots and handheld camera, and was edited by selecting fragments from different takes, in a sort of elliptical edition.