La Mirada Film Festival

Overview

Mirada in Spanish means a glance or gaze and it’s certainly worth running your eye over this year’s La Mirada Film Festival program.

The festival brings a scintillating selection of new release Spanish and South American films to ACMI and Cinema Nova this week. From a romantic comedy with UFOs (Nacho Vigalondo’s Extraterrestre) to a thriller about a beauty queen caught up in Mexican drug wars (Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala), to a quest to capture the essence of haute cuisine through music (Felipe Ugarte’s documentary Mugaritz BSO), the program is full of surprises and delights.

There is also a bit of celebrity sheen to proceedings, with sessions selected by international luminaries such as Wes Anderson and Gael Garcia Bernal, and a retrospective of Spanish film curated by Pedro Almodovar.  With Spanish music and tapas too, La Mirada is making a serious tilt at the title of coolest film festival in town.