Overview
When you're a film festival that's all about the best cinema from Spain and Latin America, and you've been showcasing flicks from the two regions for a quarter century, how do you mark the occasion? If you're Australia's annual Spanish Film Festival, you put together a hefty 25th-birthday festival filled with 32 movies. That's the just-announced plan for 2023's event, which will take over screens around the country across June and July complete with Spanish box-office hits, stars from beloved series, a focus on female directors and plenty more.
As usual, this year's Spanish Film Festival is taking its show on the road, launching first in Canberra, Adelaide and Brisbane from Wednesday, June 14, and then a day later in Melbourne, Perth and Byron Bay. Sydney's season will commence on Tuesday, June 20, avoiding a clash with Sydney Film Festival, aka the Harbour City's other huge excuse to spend winter in a darkened theatre.
Kicking off this fellow SFF is the Australian premiere of culinary comedy Two Many Chefs, which follows a father-and-son pair reuniting in the high-cuisine scene in Bilbao. Also a high-profile must-see is the festival's centrepiece selection Alcarràs, the winner of the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear in 2022. It popped up at a few local fests last year, and is now finally being made available to a wider Aussie audience.
Other highlights include five-time Goya Award-winner Prison 77, a smash in its homeland starring Miguel Herrán from Netflix's Money Heist; The Kings of the World, which focuses on five Medellín teenagers; and Four's a Crowd, the latest from The Bar, Witching and Bitching and As Luck Would Have It filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia. Plus, there's thriller A Singular Crime, about a wealthy businessman's disappearance in Argentina in the 80s — and Staring at Strangers, where The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent's Paco León spies on a family from inside a closet (and yes, sounds like it takes its cues from Parasite).
Film lovers can also look forward to rom-com My Father's Mexican Wedding, about two Spanish siblings travelling abroad for the titular nuptials; Mighty Victoria, which sees residents of a small town try to build their own steam train in 1930s Mexico; black-and-white horror film History of the Occult; and feminist Argentinian western The Broken Land.
The 2022 fest boasts an Australian link as well via Greg Mortimer, about the passengers and crew on the Australian cruise ship that left for Antarctica just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic being declared.
And, the Spanish Film Festival's survey of prominent Spanish and Latin American women directors includes seven movies, while its five-title 2023 retrospective is dedicated to iconic Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, who passed away earlier in 2023.
SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL 2023 DATES:
Wednesday, June 14–Wednesday, July 5: Palace Electric Cinema, Canberra
Wednesday, June 14–Wednesday, July 5: Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas, Adelaide
Wednesday, June 14–Wednesday, July 5: Palace James Street and Palace Barracks, Brisbane
Thursday, June 15–Wednesday, July 5: The Astor Theatre, Palace Cinema Como, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Westgarth, The Kino, Palace Balwyn and Pentridge Cinema, Melbourne
Thursday, June 15–Wednesday, July 5: Palace Raine Square, Luna Leederville and Luna on SX, Perth
Thursday, June 15–Wednesday, July 5: Palace Byron Bay, Byron Bay
Tuesday, June 20–Wednesday, July 12: Palace Norton Street, Palace Verona, Palace Central and Chauvel Cinema, Sydney
The 2023 Spanish Film Festival tours Australia in June and July. For more information or to buy tickets, visit the festival's website.