Distinctive Spanish Docs Set for Cannes Limelight
variety.comHolly Jones Cannes Docs highlights Spain as part of its Docs in Progress program, featuring four documentaries that range from the avant-garde to the introspective.
Spain’s doc filmmakers have labored to establish international footing — battling the stigma that the category is made up of dry narratives, productions strive for the robust funding granted to fiction. “There’s still a negative connotation that the documentary’s something purely informative, expository or boring.
It’s a state of mind that affects the public, but more importantly the distribution and exhibition. We’ve the great challenge of explaining that yes, the documentary has a cinematographic, narrative and emotional treatment comparable to ‘real cinema,’” says Rafa Molés of Suica Films.
Increasingly, docs have blurred borders, to positive effect. “Since the democratization of digital devices at the beginning of this century and creation of the first specialized documentary studios in our country from the 2000s to present, documentaries are increasingly porous, open to hybridization with fiction [and] other artistic disciplines,” says Alejandro Alvarado and Concha Barquero, directors of “A Film By Fernando Ruiz Vergara.” “Many critics and researchers agree that documentary film’s been a true laboratory, it’s also produced the most suggestive, groundbreaking titles in Spanish cinema in recent decades,” they add.
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