Plot Outline :
Hector (Karra Elejalde) is spending a few days in the countryside with his girlfriend, Clara (Candela Fernández), when he sees something that catches his attention while playing with his binoculars. Looking at a nearby house near a wooded area, Hector spies a beautiful woman taking her clothes off, and decides to take a stroll and give her a closer look. However, when he arrives at the house several minutes later, the woman is lying in the grass and appears to either be dead or passed out.

As Hector examines her, he’s attacked by a strange man and flees on foot. Hector seeks refuge in a building that turns out to be a research facility owned by a mysterious scientist (Nacho Vigalondo), who gives him a place to hide inside a futuristic closet. However, Hector realizes it was actually a time-travel machine when he emerges a few minutes later and looks out the window to see himself standing over the unconscious woman in the distance.

http://nitroflare.com/view/EF5A2B1C1ECB269/Nacho.Vigalondo.2007.Los.Cronocrimenes.DVDRip.XViD-KG.avi
http://nitroflare.com/view/2D0C605CD7935E0/Nacho.Vigalondo.2007.Los.Cronocrimenes.DVDRip.XViD-KG.srt

https://uploadgig.com/file/download/b4f8340bb2f28346/Nacho.Vigalondo.2007.Los.Cronocrimenes.DVDRip.XViD-KG.avi
https://uploadgig.com/file/download/3e80E846d20464A3/Nacho.Vigalondo.2007.Los.Cronocrimenes.DVDRip.XViD-KG.srt

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English – .srt

Synopsis:
Parking lot security guard Luna is bored with her uneventful daily routine but a call about a customer complaint leads her to discover how the night guard, Diego, alleviates his boredom. Soon the pair develops a relationship by communicating through the garage’s CCTV footage.

http://nitroflare.com/view/15BB213A09FCAFF/Timecode_%282016%29.mkv

https://uploadgig.com/file/download/4BcBf3a82358b96e/Timecode 2016.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English (muxed)

Synopsis:
A woman walks by her home and finally takes a shower – She buy colored fabrics in a trade. A man visiting a post office – Succession of scenic pictures and semi-autonomous fading almost always unexpected. A series of situations or suite, though apparently unrelated, revolve around a thematic development that gives body and drive the story without resorting to the use of an anecdote as plot continuity.

Review:
The narrative approach of Nocturn 29 is based on a series or suites of apparently unconnected situations, that always turn around the development of a subject that gives “body” and unity to the story without resorting to the use of an anecdote as plot continuity. At the center of its story, Nocturn 29 has a main character (Lucía Bosé), whose presence is like a linking thread through which the spectator manages to reach a thematic coherence and the meaning of the film, with a broken view, syncopated and caustic, but also poetic. It is a realistic film in the sense that when speaking of realism I am always referring to a realism in results. This is what makes it coherent.

http://nitroflare.com/view/025A1B44265F258/Nocturno_29_%281968%29_–_Pere_Portabella.mkv

https://uploadgig.com/file/download/623b91138c417D1f/Nocturno 29 1968 — Pere Portabella.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English, Spanish, French (muxed)

Quote:
At the end of the Spanish Civil War, a working-class family that migrates from rural Spain to Madrid in the hopes of finding a better life, and their hopes are thwarted by Don Roque, the personfication of the oppressive social forces at work in the Madrid of the 1940s.

What this family find instead is bad housing, treacherous people and black marketeering. Often hailed as Spain’s first neo-realist film, Furrows is a curious combination of city symphony, social drama and gangster thriller; its director, Nieves Conde, was a member of the Spanish Falange, and hoped to use the film as an argument against uncontrolled emigration to the cities. Regardless, no Spanish film since Buñuel’s Land Without Bread [Les hurdes] (1932) had painted as desolate a picture of Spanish life, nor pointed a finger more directly at the government for failing to take action in a rapidly worsening situation. Furrows also begins a dialogue—later taken up by films such as Ferreri’s The Little Apartment [El pisito] and Berlanga’s The Executioner [El verdugo]—about the insufficiency of a ‘modernization from above’ that refuses to alter traditional lifestyles and social relationships. The performances of the large cast are uniformly excellent.
Peña, Film Society of Lincoln Center

Quote:
Surcos is considered one of the very few—if not the only—Spanish neo-realist films from the era when the style was being created and popularized in Italy. The picture only escaped censorship because José María García Escudero, Spain’s Chief of Cinematography, was progressive enough to value the film for its artistic merit.

The film dealt with issues virtually unseen during Franco’s rule, including rural immigration into the cities, poverty, prostitution, unemployment, and class conflicts. Surcos is a view of the contradictions found in Franco’s regime. The Catholic Church considered the film “deeply dangerous,” yet political observers labeled the drama of “national interest.” The film was not released until its controversial ending was removed.

Wikipedia

Quote:
The original title, Surcos sobre el asfalto (Furrows in the Asphalt)… was meant to reflect the difficulties faced by farmers in adapting to urban life at the time.

The film was shot in the vicinity of Atocha, Lavapiés, Legazpi, and Delicias, and you can see scenes from everyday life in Madrid in the years after the Spanish Civil War. The film very accurately portrays daily life—in a Corrala (a typical residence of the lower class), the café-bars of the time, the employment office, markets, music halls, the black market in the streets, etc.
Wikipedia

http://nitroflare.com/view/A55820E92339336/Surcos_Jose.Antonio.Nieves.Conde_1951.Ri-Ye.mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/D7F93E33F31F22C/Surcos_Jose.Antonio.Nieves.Conde_1951.eng.Ri-Ye.srt

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

Quote:
Vito, Luis and Francesco are three Spanish friends around thirty who travel by van to Paris for no apparent reason, just looking for a reunion with their respective ancient, idyllic and yet ephemeral love affairs, perhaps with the only mission of surprising themselves and continue to still feel alive.

Quote:
Jonas Trueba’s follow-up to his well-received ‘The Wishful Thinkers’ picked up awards in Malaga and acclaim at Buenos Aires’ BAFICI festival

“We’ll always have Paris,” Ricks says in Casablanca. The characters in The Romantic Exiles have never had Paris, but want it badly, along with all it implies. Jonas Trueba, son of the Oscar winner Fernando, is one of the bright lights of Spanish arthouse cinema in its more accessible incarnation, and this follow-up to his well-received style piece The Wishful Thinkers takes a similar trio of self-absorbed, tousle-headed, baggy-trousered dreamers and takes them in a battered orange van to France — obviously the director’s spiritual home — to muse on life, love and art.

Always engaging, often comic and deftly handled, Trueba’s work seems to be made for the consumption of arts students under thirty, and since there are plenty of them to be found around the globe at the arty end of the international festival circuit, that’s where Exiles will travel. The film picked up three awards at Malaga and has undertaken what will presumably be an extensive fest itinerary.

It kicks off with a quote from E.H. Carr’s novel of the same name, about a nineteenth century Russian family which becomes embroiled in revolutionary affairs in France and Italy. There’ll be no such sweep or range here, and indeed Trueba’s film feels like a gently ironic record of the last gasp of that noble romantic tradition.

Two of the trio appeared in The Wishful Thinkers and are probably the same characters, each hoping to continue a relationship previously started. Vito (Vito Sanz) is the driver and as a character is the least well-defined of the three, only coming into his own late on in a wonderfully comic, awkwardly self-conscious dialogue with his French dream girl, Vahina (Vahina Giocante). Francesco (Francesco Carril) is the most obviously tortured of the three romantics, before during and after his meeting with Renata (Renata Antonante): Luis (Luis E. Pares), (a film academic here playing a film academic who is, wink, wink, a specialist in exile in film) is seeking a reunion with Isabelle (Isabelle Stoffel, memorably over-the-top in The Wishful Thinkers, considerably more grown-up and contained here).

The early road scenes are dull: there’s only so much fun to be had in watching people traveling in a van wrapped up in their own thoughts, however romantic and interesting those thoughts may be. It’s all so much more fun when they’re talking to one another in a variety of languages, as when the group gathers round a dinner table in the company of an old, wise American (the 60s counterculture figure Jim Haynes) to pin down some of the film’s themes, such as the bizarre but intriguing wish that the 21st century will belong to Buckminster Fuller. In a film heavy with literary and film references, those to the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, in particular to her magnificent essay about education, The Little Virtues, are key: Renata quotes extensively from it.

The Romantic Exiles is a film about the end of youth, about women as the new drivers of the world, about the struggle to find emotional fulfillment (call it “life”) in a world where it’s increasingly difficult to find it, about friendship, and about film. Stylistically, it’s suggestive of the deceptively meandering, heavily nuanced worlds created by Eric Rohmer and Philippe Garrel, and has much of the same semi-improvised lightness of touch and cleanness of line.

At his best, though, Rohmer is never merely self-indulgent, as The Romantic Exiles sometimes is. To see the group sitting in a bar transfixed by a not-very good (but yes, impeccably romantic) song performed in its entirety by Miren Iza of the Spanish group Tulsa is to be very aware of time passing by, especially in a film with a running time of just 70 minutes, and regardless of whether the lyrics offer a running commentary on the film or not.

But for all its archness (and indeed perhaps offensiveness to a generation of unemployed Spaniards who would like nothing better than to get into a van and head off to France in search of romance, but can’t), The Romantic Exiles is at least sincere in its depiction of its half-baked attempt to make its proganists’ little dreams come true. Spanish cinema is too often lacking in Trueba’s delicate, engaging irony.

http://nitroflare.com/view/68658EFAC249FA4/Jonas_Trueba_-_%282015%29_The_Romantic_Exiles.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

Quote:
Ever since her mum died, María has taken care of her father and her siblings. That’s why her father’s announcement of marriage to his nurse brings María’s world crashing down around her. At the age of 35, she’ll have to change her fate.

http://nitroflare.com/view/E88B51D37FCEC33/Nely_Reguera_-_%282016%29_Maria_and_Everybody_Else.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English, Spanish

Quote:
A dashing former matador named Diego Montes (Nacho Martínez), prematurely retired after a career-ending injury, rehearses the principal tenets of the art of the kill at a converted classroom on his estate to a group of aspiring bullfighters, including an unlikely, hypersensitive student named Angel Giménez (Antonio Banderas). The training lecture then cuts to the image of a beautiful, enigmatic woman sitting on a park bench, María (Assumpta Serna) as she initiates contact with an anonymous man innocuously passing by, follows him back to an apartment, and, at the height of physical intimacy, stabs him with a long ornamental pin behind the nape of the neck – in the region between the shoulder blades defined in bullfighting as the cleft of the clods. The shot then cuts back to the training grounds as Angel, intrigued by (and undoubtedly, attracted to) his instructor, follows Diego back to the house for a drink of water, and soon grows anxious when the conversation exposes his inexperience with women. In retaliation, Angel attempts to prove his masculinity by stalking Diego’s lover – a young model named Eva (Eva Cobo) – in an impulsive act that culminates in an equally humiliating failed sexual assault. However, unable to be taken seriously by the police, Angel decides to confess to a series of murders after viewing the crime scene photographs on the commissioner’s (Eusebio Poncela) desk, and in the process, unwittingly unites the paths of the crippled, morbidly aroused Diego and the fatally seductive María.

Pedro Almodóvar creates a highly sensual, deliriously overripe, and stylistically audacious portrait of love, death, fate, and violence in Matador. From the opening shot of the iconic matador, Diego, deriving sexual gratification from watching a horror exploitation film, Almodóvar establishes the interrelation between sexuality and savagery: the parallel cutting of the bullfighting training with María’s precise and ritualistic murder; Angel’s validation of his masculinity through Eva’s attempted violation; Diego’s initial pursuit of María inside a movie theater as the tragic, final sequence from Duel in the Sun unfolds; Diego’s repeated playback of the his fateful goring, spotting María on video among the spectators. Almodóvar further uses environmental elements to underscore emotional state, from the idyllic clouds that precipitate Angel’s consuming, morbid visions, to the portentous inclement weather that punctuates his encounter with Eva, to the total eclipse that materializes during the final encounter. By articulating profound connection through instinctual aggression, Matador serves as a bold and provocative allegory for the self-destructive cultural legacy of machismo, bravura, and ritualistic violence.

http://nitroflare.com/view/B9579084CDDD9A9/Pedro_Almodovar_-_%281986%29_Matador.mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/6CFCF0AC71F47A9/Pedro_Almodovar_-_%281986%29_Matador.srt.txt

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

Quote:
Emilia, a modest employee of a fashion house, is in love and does not hesitate to steal your business suit to accompany her boyfriend to the festival. But everything goes wrong, discovered the theft, is fired from her job and that’s not the worst.

Mur Oti was born in Vigo in 1908, the son of a prison warden who struck lucky in the spirits business and moved the family to Cuba when Manuel was 13. There the young Mur Oti developed strong relationships with his mother and two sisters, and learned to work the land as a cowboy. The former would come to influence his powerful, fully rounded women characters throughout his filmography; the latter fed into his depiction of the extremity of the Castilian climate in Orgullo – essentially a Spanish western.

Mur Oti started making films in 1949, almost by chance, after being hugely successful at a series of other careers, including novelist, poet, scriptwriter, playwright, lawyer and even perfumer. By the time he returned to Spain in 1930, he was a well-known and highly respected figure. But what he should be remembered for are the 17 features he wrote, directed and produced (he ran his own production company) until 1976 – one of the most ambitious, striking and thematically consistent bodies of work in the history of Spanish cinema.

Lauded as El Genio (the genius), Mur Oti was popular with critics and public alike, and Orgullo was invited to the Venice Film Festival in 1955. But it’s precisely this success that’s led to the obscuring of his achievements in the years since Franco’s death in 1975. As film scholar Alberto Mira has explained, after Franco whole genres were ignored in Spain because they had been produced within the state-sponsored commercial cinema preferred by the dictator (who was famously referred to as a cinephile by Orson Welles).

A closer look at many of these commercial genre films, however, can occasionally reveal a veiled critique of the status quo. (Mur Oti, after all, fought with the Republicans and was sent to concentration camps in both France and Spain, only to be saved by his father, who worked in the local prison.) Of course, the highly stylised Orgullo resonates with echoes of the Spanish Civil War, chiming with Franco’s vision of the war as crusade. But it is also firmly grounded in the historical reality of a tragedy that often tore whole families apart; most importantly, it exposes the absurdity of ancient disputes, the backwardness of provincialism and the devastating consequences of isolation.

The role of women is pivotal in Mur Oti’s filmography, and although Laura is inescapably linked with the land (and hence with fertility), she’s also a determined leader, very far from complying with Franco’s ideal of submissive, domestic womanhood. Most tellingly, she works the land with her own hands (something her male counterpart is never shown doing) – an action that also eliminates class boundaries. In fact the images of the land and workers, and the emphasis on collective effort, are more reminiscent of Russian filmmaking and communist propaganda than of the staunch feudalism of the Franco regime.

But Mur Oti’s work was doomed to fall into oblivion all the same. The transition to democracy in Spain fostered an implacable desire to break with everything that smacked of the old regime and its moral values. After 1976 he never directed again; his films simply did not fit with the post-Franco zeitgeist. The new mood stigmatised anything made under the Franco banner, particularly in the cultural realm. Even Carlos Saura and Luis García Berlanga were sniffed at by the younger generation for dealing with elements of Spanish life that Franco had fetishised, such as flamenco and folklore. But in the case of Manuel Mur Oti – arguably as great as either of those directors – the baby was most definitely thrown out with the bathwater.

http://nitroflare.com/view/C260CFE2F5EC47D/Manuel_Mur_Oti_-_%281951%29_Black_Sky.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

Summary from filmaffinity:
On a beach in Barcelona, the body of a young man is discovered. His face eaten by fish, tattooed on his arm is the phrase: “I was born to revolutionize hell”. So begins a strange enigma. To start with, a name, an identity for this dead man must be found. This is the task facing Pepe Carvalho, Galician detective, former CIA agent and professional skeptic, none of which prevents him from enjoying and savoring the pleasures of good food and good sex. In the underworld of Barcelona and in the streets and canals of Amsterdam. Carvalho is soon coming up with some answers.

http://nitroflare.com/view/0E215E5130310CE/Tatuaje_%28Bigas_Luna_1976%29.avi

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:n/a

Synopsis
A six years old girl, faces the first summer with her new adoptive family. A biographical piece, an early coming of age drama about a girl who learns to fit in a new rural world while coping with the loss of her mother.

Emotional Spanish Film Captures the Essence of Childhood

The human condition has been captured through the eyes of a young girl in Carla Simón’s autobiographical feature debut Summer 1993, a minimalist drama from Spain that explores the grieving process of a child.

As the title suggests, the story takes place in the summer of 1993 and chronicles the life of Frida, a six-year-old girl whose parents have recently died. She is taken in by her uncle and aunt, who have now become her legal guardians (and have a four-year-old daughter of their own). Throughout the course of the summer she must adjust to her new life in the remote province of Catalonia, which is far from her former home in the busy city of Barcelona.

As the reality of her new life begins to sink in, Frida struggles to comprehend what has happened to her and, impervious to the weight of her recent loss, she spends her summer exploring the landscapes around her and playing with her new sister. When exposed to the love and nurture of her new family dynamic, she begins to emotionally withdraw from them and acts up in a series of behaviours that undermine their authority. What follows is a heartbreaking – and joyous – emotional journey that encapsulates the essence of childhood more profoundly than I can recall seeing before.

Simón has brilliantly created an environment for her actors that is non-evasive and allows them the freedom to explore. With two child actors at the crux of the story, she observes their evolution candidly and evokes a raw and spontaneous delivery that feels mostly improvised. Her six and four-year-old stars give two of the most natural and convincing performances that I have seen from children their age, with young Laia Artigas carrying the entire weight of the film on her shoulders. As an actress she is wise beyond her years, and her handling of such heavy material is astounding. Within the skip of a beat she takes her character to places that most adult actors couldn’t imagine, from deep despair and full awareness, to youthful jubilation and inexplicable jealousy. She dazzles the screen with a kaleidoscopic performance that serves as a masterclass to any aspiring actor.

The film’s weakness, however, is its cinematography. The camera is so squarely focused on capturing emotional energy that it disregards the surrounding environment. Were it not for a few fleeting glimpses of mountainous regions the audience would be forgiven for misplacing the location. The world surrounding Frida’s life should play a large thematic role in her story, yet Simón’s focus is honed in on the characters themselves and rarely pulls away. This, unfortunately, results in an invasive shaky-cam aesthetic and a forced emotional perspective. Had she relaxed her camera a little she would have captured something truly unique and dynamic.

It’s also a slow film, almost wearisome in fact, and because of the relaxed approach to capturing the performances the narrative meanders significantly. Shots linger on characters for minutes at a time where little is said. We are given an image and we are forced to make of it what we will. That is, until the observational motive is revealed. This makes for an often-gruelling viewing experience, where the payoff becomes more obvious upon reflection. The snail’s pace at which it all unfolds may serve the character arc well but it may also test the audience’s patience.

Nevertheless, these shortcomings don’t take away from the film’s overall impact. Summer 1993 is an emotionally charged character study that runs the gamut of emotions. It is superbly acted and beautifully earnest, and features one of the most fulfilling end scenes I have seen in many years.

Glenn Cochrane for thereelword.net

Awards

• Berlinale International Film Festival – GWFF Best First Feature Award and the Grand Prix of the Generation Kplus International Jury
• Málaga Film Festival – Golden Biznaga Award, Feroz Puerta Oscura prize, SIGMIS prize, SGAE Dunya Ayaso Award, ASECAN Ópera Prima Award
• Special Prize of the Jury in Istanbul Film Festival
• Best Director, Audience Award and SIGNIS Prize at Buenos Aires Film Festival
• Cannes Écrans Juniors Award
• Golden Duke in Odessa International Film Festival:
• Best Feature Film and Young Critics Award at FicCat
• Special Mention of the Jury at the BFI London Film Festival
• Best Film in Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival
• Golden Gateway Award in Mumbai Film Festival
• Film Award at Premis Continuarà by RTVE
• Prix Cinématographique CRIMIC/Sorbonne at Festival Différent!
• Audience Award at CineLatino in Germany
• Grand Prix at Festival international du film de femmes de Salé
• LUX Film Prize official selection
• Nomination to the European Discovery – Prix Fireprisci within European Film Awards;
• 5 Nomination to Premios Iberoamericanos de Cine FÉNIX.

http://nitroflare.com/view/3826FA28E472E9B/Estiu_1993_2017_DVDrip_catala_per_HAL9000_Mecanoscrit.cat_.avi
http://nitroflare.com/view/F298265BB7050E8/Estiu_1993_2017_DVDrip_catala_per_HAL9000_Mecanoscrit.cat_.srt

https://publish2.me/file/ff1ae32cc7cd9/Estiu_1993_2017_DVDrip_catala_per_HAL9000_Mecanoscrit.cat_.mp4
https://publish2.me/file/13bb628118316/Estiu_1993_2017_DVDrip_catala_per_HAL9000_Mecanoscrit.cat_.srt

Language(s):Catalan
Subtitles:Spanish (srt)

Saura is not exactly obscure and in need of featuring, but this movie isn’t watched too often. It has bad reviews, even Vincent Canby wanted more action saying “the Amazon has never flowed so slowly” (the Orinoco is part of the Amazon system). Saura was trying to tell a story about the hispanic world, going to the 500 year anniversary of the conquista. Just like Herzog he has a tale of obsession, but much more down to earth and realistic. Boring almost, not so popular. If you’re a Herzog fan or perhaps even liked 1492, you might suffer stimulus withdrawal symptoms when watching this one. If you like historical detail and a gritty sense of realism, you may not find it a perfect movie but one that goes a long way.
–flipfink

Quote:
Saura’s account of Spain’s quest for Peruvian gold differs from Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God in intention and budget. Loopy Lope de Aguirre and his conquistadors sail themselves up a creek without gold or paddle, decimated by unseen assailants, hostile environs, exhausted provisions, and mad, merciless self-slaughter. Aguirre (the excellent Antonutti) is a tired 50-year-old way down the military pecking order; if voice-overs suggest he sees himself as God’s instrument, Saura portrays his murderous deeds asa product of the clashing forces of Spanish society. His attempt to demythologise this folie de grandeur within the conventions of the big budget epic (at $9 million, Spain’s most expensive film to date) excels in evoking the destructive effects of sexual jealousy, envy, greed and the Spanish obsession with death. But despite lush ‘Scope photography and the meticulous display of authentic armour and finery, the film is often oppressive, and too dependent on faces to communicate meaning, adding obscurity to something already complex and ambiguous. Not Saura’s best, perhaps, but a fascinating attempt to get to the heart of myths, men and history.

http://nitroflare.com/view/A8044FC3DFFBCF4/Carlos_Saura_-_%281988%29_El_Dorado.mkv

https://publish2.me/file/6c2ac49e5da2b/Carlos_Saura_-_%281988%29_El_Dorado.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

The title refers to Madrid’s central square (from which all distances within Spain are measured). Zero may also describe the state of the lives of 14 strangers. The stories of these fourteen collide at this meeting point on a sultry August afternoon. Mistaken identities and second chances are among the results of this comedy of errors featuring, among other characters, a horny & gay university student, an internet-love seeker flamenco dancer, a macho but lovelorn gigolo, an actress, and a businessman starved for new sexual experiences.

http://nitroflare.com/view/EAD5DD573571A6C/km.0_Kilometer.Zero.avi

https://publish2.me/file/4d312535d4da2/km.0_Kilometer.Zero.mp4

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English (hardsub)

Quote:
Madrid, 1991. A teen girl finds herself besieged by an evil supernatural force after she played Ouija with two classmates.

http://nitroflare.com/view/8886B5DD7E1D02E/Paco_Plaza_-_%282017%29_Veronica.mkv

https://publish2.me/file/07880acfc45fd/Paco_Plaza_-_%282017%29_Veronica.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

Quote:
A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning a slave who turns to the rising tide of Christianity in the hope of pursuing freedom while falling in love with his mistress, the famous philosophy and mathematics professor Hypatia of Alexandria.

Quote:

I went to see “Agora” expecting an epic with swords, sandals and sex. I found swords and sandals, some unexpected opinions about sex, and a great deal more. This is a movie about ideas, a drama based on the ancient war between science and superstition. At its center is a woman who in the fourth century A.D. was a scientist, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and teacher, respected in Egypt, although women were not expected to be any of those things.

Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) was born into the family business. Her father Theon (Michael Lonsdale) was the curator of the Library of Alexandria, which had as its mission “collecting all the world’s knowledge.” Scholars traveled there from across the ancient world, doing research and donating manuscripts. It was destroyed by Christians in 391 A.D., and “Agora” takes place in the years surrounding that incalculable loss.

The film’s title refers to a name for the public assembly places in ancient Greek city-states. The library was such an agora, and we see Hypatia teaching a class of young men who listen to her with open admiration.

There’s an early indication that this won’t be a routine “Troy”-like exercise in CGI action scenes: Hypatia actually does teach something, using the first scale model of planetary motion to deduce, centuries before Galileo, that the Earth cannot be the center of the universe.

Hypatia has three students completely under her spell: Davus (Max Minghella), Synesius (Rupert Evans) and Orestes (Oscar Isaac). All make the error of feeling lust, Orestes least subtly. Hypatia seems devoid of sexual feeling; perhaps she believes her vocation prohibits it. Her method of rejecting Orestes is brutally direct. Although Rachel Weisz may be beautiful, in the performance she makes no effort to exploit that, and is singleminded in her dedication to knowledge.

The film’s director and co-writer, Alejandro Amenabar, re-creates the Alexandria of Hypatia’s time with a mixture of sets and effects, showing it at the tipping point between Greek and Roman paganism and the new religion of Christianity. As she studies with and under her father, drawing from countless parchment scrolls in the library, in the city the Christians burn with a fearful intensity. Hypatia herself is not interested in religion; she feels passion only for her ideas.

Neither the pagans nor Christians are pacifists. Both sides possess that peculiar certainty that their opponents must by definition be evil. Blood is shed. Foolishly believing they hold the upper hand, the pagans, led by Orestes, conduct a bloodletting, only to learn in a savage lesson that there are now more Christians than they imagined. This warfare culminates in the destruction of the library. Hypatia races with her students to rescue armloads of scrolls, a few of which may literally have been responsible for our surviving texts from Aristotle and other Greeks.

In sword-and-sandal epics, the Christians are without fail the good guys. Not here. Christians and pagans are equally blinded by the conviction that those who disagree deserve death. After the rise of the Christians, the factions grow even more militant; one group wears black robes and searches streets for dissenters, heretics and Jews.

There is historical truth here. The actual teachings of Jesus are often imperfectly observed by his followers. The film also has unmistakable parallels to militant Islam and to the sectarian conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. The movie doesn’t make as much as you might expect about Hypatia’s gender; possibly the subjugation of women was so unconsciously and universally accepted that, in some sense, she was seen less as a woman than as a daughter teaching the lessons of her father.

That Hypatia was a genius seems beyond question. Her invention, the hydrometer, is being used in the Gulf at this moment to distinguish oil from water by their specific densities. Although “Agora” avoids the temptation to sneak in a romantic subplot, it gets mileage out of her character as a focus of emotional intrigue for her male students, who would have never seen a woman anything like her.

Alejandro Amenabar seems drawn to stories about the determination of the intellect to work in the real world. His “The Sea Inside” (2004) starred Javier Bardem as a paralyzed man who fought for the right to die. In “Open Your Eyes” (1997), a disfigured man struggles to express his love for a woman. The underrated “The Others” (2001) starred Nicole Kidman as a woman compelled to prove her ideas of ghosts have objective reality. Here a woman finds the Earth circles the sun, but moves in indifference to her ideas.

http://nitroflare.com/view/1ADA5A38225BE70/Alejandro_Amenabar_-_%282009%29_Agora.mkv

https://publish2.me/file/146d514c4027c/Alejandro_Amenabar_-_%282009%29_Agora.mp4

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

Viridiana, a young novice about to take her final vows as a nun, accedes to a request from her widowed uncle to visit him. Moved purely by a sense of obligation, she does so. Her uncle is moved by her resemblance to his late wife to attempt to seduce Viridiana, and tragedy ensues. In the aftermath, Viridiana tries to assuage her guilt by creating a haven for the destitute folk who live around her uncle’s estate. But from these good intentions, too, comes little good.

http://nitroflare.com/view/0C3B105874D81C9/Viridiana.1961.720p.WEBRip.AAC2.0.H.264-HRiP.mkv

https://publish2.me/file/7c4aa3f204ef6/Viridiana.1961.720p.WEBRip.AAC2.0.H.264-HRiP.mp4

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

Quote:
On an ordinary day in bustling downtown Madrid, life ticks over as usual, while inside a decrepit and noisy central bar, a motley assortment of common urbanites is killing time indolently, up until a loud gunshot sends chills down the spine. Out of the blue, now a man lies dead in front of the bar in a pool of blood, and then surprisingly, in broad daylight, another death follows. Where did that mysterious lethal bullet come from? Is this an act of terrorism or is there a solitary invisible sniper hidden on a roof? As hysteria prevails and the bodies miraculously vanish into thin air, the perplexed and terrified bar’s regulars are bound to turn on each other, paranoid and suspicious of the potential assassin who might be hiding inside the place. Is there indeed a wolf among sheep?

http://nitroflare.com/view/FCB1EEFDE239C1F/Alex_de_la_Iglesia_-_%282017%29_The_Bar.mkv

https://publish2.me/file/25beae668ba4b/Alex_de_la_Iglesia_-_%282017%29_The_Bar.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

Quote:
As we follow a mother (Jennifer Connelly) and her son (Cillian Murphy), we delve into a past marred by an accident that tears them apart. She will become a renowned artist and healer, and he will grow into his own as a peculiar falconer who bears the marks of a double absence. In the present, a young journalist (Mélanie Laurent) will bring about an encounter between the two that puts the very meaning of life and art into question, so that we may contemplate the possibility of living life to its fullest, despite the uncertainties littering our paths.

http://nitroflare.com/view/A6D9ECE11174226/Claudia_Llosa_-_%282014%29_Aloft.mkv

https://publish2.me/file/6cbfa91e6c022/Claudia_Llosa_-_%282014%29_Aloft.mkv

Spanish srt
https://www.subdivx.com/X6XNDQyNjMxX-aloft-2014.html

Language(s):English, French
Subtitles:English,Spanish

Natalia Nikolaevna lives 400 km from Havana, in the city where the first nuclear power plant would be built in Cuba. He arrived 20 years ago from the USSR, to be reunited with her husband and work as an opera singer. In 1992, he began the great crisis, known as the Special Period. Natalia divorced, and rooted in the place gradually discovered him as the most hostile of spaces. Single mother without job opportunities, invented their own stage-a park-, their own -the spectators tourists- and their own livelihood: what gave him for his arias.

La historia da muchas vueltas; sólo así se explica la vida de Natalia Nikolaevna, una mujer kazaja perdida en la isla de Cuba, donde sobrevive cantando arias a los turistas. Para entender qué hace allí hay que saber que cuando aterrizó en la isla, ella era soviética: Kazajistán era parte de la Urss, que se desmembraba en esos días. Viajó a la isla con su hijo, desde Leningrado, para reencontrarse con su marido cubano. Él trabajaba en la construcción de la que sería la primera central electronuclear de Cuba, un proyecto para el que se levantaría una ciudad a cinco kilómetros de Cienfuegos. Allí vivirían, junto con los 20.000 operarios que mantendrían esta peculiar fábrica de energía. Pero la suerte del destino se cruzó para la protagonista de este documental cuando empezó el periodo especial (la gran crisis). Porque mientras entre Europa y Asia se deshacía el país de donde vino, la Urss; en el Atlántico, Fidel Castro paralizaba el proyecto de ciudad: no había recursos. Ella, que para entonces se había divorciado se quedó atrapada, a 400 kilómetros de la Habana, entre dos mundos que se dejaban de ser como cuando ella puso en pie en ellos. Esta es la historia que ha contado el director de cine Adrián Silvestre (Valencia, 1981) en el Festival de Cine de Málaga (sección documental). La cinta, que se llama como la protagonista, Natalia Nikolaevna, habla del rebusque y de sobrevivir entre las arias que aprendió a cantar en su tierra natal y los céntimos que arañaba gracias a una báscula con la que pesaba a la gente. Los treinta minutos de cine muestran el esqueleto de lo que sería una ciudad de bloques al más puro estilo soviético cuyo símbolo es el Edificio 18, una torre que nunca se llego a acabar, un lugar hoy repleto de perros, abandonado y que parece derretirse en mitad del calor del Caribe. La ciudad y el entorno es la perfecta metáfora de la vida de Natalia: un derrumbe, algo que ya no existe y no pertenece a ningún lugar, señala el joven director. Madre soltera y sin oportunidades de trabajo, Natalia cuya edad ronda los 50- caza turistas para cantarles. Para ello no necesita más que presentarse ante los extranjeros que pasan por la colonial Cienfuegos, sentarles en un templete e interpretar sus arias rusas, italianas y cubanas. El escenario es el parque. Su música, a capella, el viaje a los lejanos teatros donde aprendió a cantar. Las bocas abiertas de los turistas que la escuchan son las que le alimentan. La kazaja, tachada por el gobierno cubano de paranoica, cuenta con una mínima, minimísima pensión como enferma mental (unos ocho euros, calcula Silvestre). Ella afirma estar en perfectas condiciones, quisiera que se le reconociera su carrera como cantante lírica en la isla, ser parte de la cultura del país y puesto que todo eso no sale, piensa en salir de Cuba, pero no sabe bien cómo ni a dónde. Muestra de su amor por sus orígenes sería la primera asociación de cultura rusa que existe en Cienfuegos, montada por ella. Pero ella no es la única obstinada en esta historia. El propio rodaje en sí tiene una parte de quijotesco: Ha costado cero euros. El viaje lo pagué con una beca del Ministerio de Cultura, por la que estaba estudiando en Cuba; los desplazamientos y comidas los asumí yo y Dinamia Producciones se ha hecho cargo de la postproducción y difusión, señala el director del documental. Y entre las dificultades, para el cineasta que rodó la historia en unos 10 días y cuatro viajes a la Ciudad Nuclear- lo más difícil fue convencer a la protagonista de la película que creyese en él y perdiera los miedos a hablar de su vida. Lo consiguió; y no sólo eso, la cinta también muestra la Cuba más íntima, la que transcurre en la casa de ella con sus estanterías desvencijadas, los colores pastel de las paredes desconchadas, el antiguo transistor y un enorme televisor que funciona sólo cuando quiere.

http://nitroflare.com/view/1BE27FEF5D896BF/Natalia_Nikolaevna.2014.Adrian_Silvestre.720p.WEBRip.AAC.x264.RIYE.mkv
http://nitroflare.com/view/FE0057AB4CB58B6/Natalia_Nikolaevna.2014.Adriaan_Silvestre.720p.WEBRip.AAC.x264.RIYE.srt

https://publish2.me/file/c6c3375a61454/Natalia_Nikolaevna.2014.Adrian_Silvestre.720p.WEBRip.AAC.x264.RIYE.mp4
https://publish2.me/file/54fab15f98b2d/Natalia_Nikolaevna.2014.Adriaan_Silvestre.720p.WEBRip.AAC.x264.RIYE.srt

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English (srt)

Quote:
Julieta (Emma Suarez) is a middle-aged woman living in Madrid with her boyfriend Lorenzo. Both are going to move to Portugal when she casually runs into Bea, former best friend of her daughter Antia, who reveals that this one is living in Switzerland married and with three children. With the heart broken after 12 years of total absence of her daughter, Julieta cancels the journey to Portugal and she moves to her former building, in the hope that Antia someday communicates with her sending a letter. Alone with her thoughts, Julieta starts to write her memories to confront the pain of the events happened when she was a teenager (Adriana Ugarte) and met Xoan, a Galician fisherman. Falling in love with him, Julieta divides her time between the family, the job and the education of Antia until a fatal accident changes their lives. Slowly decaying in a depression, Julieta is helped by Antia and Bea, but one day Antia goes missing suddenly after a vacation with no clues about where to find …

http://nitroflare.com/view/25ECB04511A1301/Pedro_Almodovar_-_%282016%29_Julieta.mkv

Eng srt:
https://subscene.com/subtitles/julieta/english/1392761

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

Description: Ann, 23 years old, lives a modest life with her two kids and her husband in a trailer in her mother’s garden. Her life takes a dramatic turn, when her doctor tells her that she has uterine cancer and only two months to live. She compiles a list of things to do before she dies, arranges her family life and falls in love to a lonely man she met in a laundromat.

23-year old Ann (Sarah Polley) is the mother of two pretty young girls and the much-loved wife of her husband Don (Scott Speedman). They struggle to make ends meet and live in a cramped trailer on her mother’s property. Don is often unemployed and Ann works nights as a janitor at the local college – which she could never afford to attend – until, one day, she collapses. A checkup reveals that she had formed a tumor on her uterus but, while it would not be a problem in an older woman, her youthful metabolism has accelerated the cancer’s spread and she learns that she has only months to live in “My Life Without Me.”

Robin:
A shy, gentle doctor breaks the bad news to Ann and her first reaction is that her condition not be told to her family and friends. Rather than burden those she loves with her coming demise, she decides to keep it to herself and makes a list of ‘things to do before I die.’ Her list runs the range from the seemingly silly, like getting her nails professionally done, to the much more serious: making tape recordings for her daughters to be played at each of their birthdays until they reach eighteen; words of comfort and advice for Don and her mother; find a replacement wife for Don; visit her jailed father whom she has not seen for 10 years; and, sleep with another man. Ann has always been faithful to her husband but now wants to experience what it is like to be with another man before she dies

Slowly and surely Ann fulfills each item on her checklist. She invites her weight-obsessed co-worker Laurie (Amanda Plummer) over for dinner as a gesture of kindness. She helps the shy doctor to better help those that need comfort in their illnesses and gets him to agree to ration out the cassette tapes to her girls to be sure they get a new one every birthday. She checks out her neighbor, also named Ann (Leonor Watling), a pretty pediatric nurse who loves kids, is single and, the dying Ann deems, a suitable replacement for her. Ann also confronts her mother and makes her see that she is wasting her life and can do better. She makes the trip to the prison for a last face-to-face with her father and, all the while, keeps everyone’s questions about her health at bay with the glib explanation that she is anemic.

One night, when she can’t sleep, she goes to the local Laundromat and meets a quiet, seemingly troubled young man, Lee (Mark Ruffalo). He volunteers to get them coffee and, while gone, Ann falls asleep. He returns and covers her sleeping figure with his overcoat and proceeds to sit and watch the pretty young woman in her slumber. When she awakens she realizes what he was doing but is not unnerved by it. He insists that she wear his coat and she leaves with the promise to return it. She does and, quietly, a romance blossoms and Ann is able to check off another item while help Lee to make his life whole once again.

“My Life Without Me” belongs to Sarah Polley. The actress came to my attention, first, as a teenager in Atom Egoyan’s powerful drama “The Sweet Hereafter” and I was convinced then that she is someone to watch. In “My Life…” she commands the screen and gives her character presence as Ann makes decisions that will affect those that she loves. The premise of “My Life Without Me” is akin to that of the Michael Keaton film, “This Is My Life,” but works far better and with much less schmarm and sentimentality, mainly due to Polley. She reminds me of Jodie Foster when the Oscar winning actress was of the same age.

The supporting cast is serviceable but mostly without much note. One exception is Deborah Harry as Ann’s mother. She runs a bakery and spends most of her life toiling away at her ovens. Hers is not a very happy or satisfying life and one of her few pleasures is to tell her granddaughters bedtime stories – usually a remembered screen story from old Joan Crawford movies. Harry evokes real sympathy for her loneliness and you applaud when she breaks out of her mundane existence at the end.

The rest of the cast do yeoman’s work but don’t have the opportunity to give full dimension to the background characters. Scott Speedman gives a smiling, optimistic performance as Ann’s husband Don and is likable as the erratically employed but loving husband and father. Mark Ruffalo’s Lee, as Ann’s romantic fling from her checklist, is a lonely divorced man whose ex has cleaned him out and he has not coped well with it, living like hermit with his books and no furniture. His short, but intense, relationship with the dying young mother helps him heal, even as he realizes that he is losing his new love. Leonor Watling, as Ann’s neighbor, is obvious as the checklist item of finding a new wife for Don. Alfred Molina is uncredited as Ann’s jailbird father whom she goes to see before she dies.

Writer-director Isabel Coixet used the story “Pretending the Bed Is a Raft,” by Nanci Kincaid, as the inspiration for “My Life Without Me,” but radically changed the direction of her adaptation. Kincaid’s story has Ann telling everyone of her plight. Coixet’s decision to have Ann keep her tragedy to herself changes the entire dynamic and allows for a strongly defined character study, by Polley, of a selfless and brave young woman.

“My Life Without Me” is both sad and hopeful as it tells how a tragic event can have positive ramifications. It is also a treatise on the power of love. I give it a B.

Laura:
Ann (Sarah Polley, “No Such Thing”) is a twenty-three year old school janitor who lives in a small trailer in her mother’s (Deborah Harry, “Spun”) backyard with her unemployed husband Dan (Scott Speedman, “Dark Blue”) and two young daughters. When she passes out at work and goes for an exam, a shy young doctor (Julian Richings) must deliver almost incomprehensible news – Ann has terminal cancer and 2-3 months left to live. Resolved to tell no one of her fate, Ann writes a list of things she wants to accomplish before she has to contemplate “My Life Without Me.”

Director Isabel Coixet (“A los que Aman”) is far more successful than writer Isabel Coixet (who adapted the short story “Pretending the Bed is a Raft”), who has concocted a fantastical tale where too many characters are too good to be true. However Coixet makes some refreshingly unusual directorial choices and star Sarah Polley shines as the downtrodden young woman who radiates life while facing death.

Ann is established as a big-hearted blue collar worker with wonderful mothering skills (she engages her girls’ imaginations with such fancies as pretending their bed is a raft) and a supportive relationship with her optimistic husband. Polley’s narration tells us that Dan was Ann’s first relationship, she had her first child at 17, second at 19 and that her dad’s been in jail for ten years, not leaving her much time to think. Ann tries not to get dragged down by her mother’s lamentations over broken dreams and lost hopes. Continuing in this spirit, when she receives her death sentence, Ann is determined to make her daughters feel loved and leave them a legacy, take a trip to the beach, spiff up her appearance, smoke and drink, say what she thinks, make love to another man, get someone to fall in love with her, visit her dad, give good advice to her mother and husband and find him a new wife. Except for that family outing, she accomplishes everything.

Coixet’s script is a frustrating mix of the lyrical and absurd, emotionally true and sentimentally cliched. Ann’s first attempt to fix her unsuspecting husband up, with her diet-obsessed coworker, Laurie (Amanda Plummer, “Ken Park”), gives the couple a believable chance to laugh over their evening (‘She ate eight ribs!’ ‘She’s a really nice person.’), but a new neighbor (Leonor Watling, “Talk to Her”) willing to watch Ann’s two young children turning out to be named Ann is a little too neat. Except for his earning ability, Dan is the perfect spouse which puts a lot of strain on our ability to engage in Ann’s romance with Lee (Mark Ruffalo, “View from the Top”). Then, once we do, it is difficult not to find Ann’s behavior unfair to the besotted young man.

Coixet makes some refreshingly unusual choices, though, that keep lifting her film above the typical woman’s weepie. As Ann is kept waiting during her initial hospital visit, she frets about her girls being picked up at school. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be waiting at school with your nose freezing off?’ she asks the nurse. ‘Yes’ is the reply as said nurse flashes back to her own experience. Ann wanders into the supermarket after an assignation with Lee and all its inhabitants begin to dance, expressing her emotions. Coixet also makes effective and restrained use of slo-mo, in addition to terrific musical selections. Cinematographer Jean Claude Larrieu achieves the chill of the Vancouver locations.

Coixet is incredibly perceptive in her casting as well. One cannot imagine anyone but Sarah Polley as the clear-eyed, determined Ann whose capacity for love continues to grow as her life span shortens. She’s a natural mother and lover, a force that nudges people towards their optimal selves. She has great chemistry with both the immensely likeable Speedman and the dreamy romantic Ruffalo (who will break your heart at film’s end). Watling has a great scene that is essentially her ‘tryout’ as Dan’s wife, where she recounts nursing Siamese twins for their last thirty hours of life. Richings makes a big impression in scant screen time as Ann’s doctor, who comes out of his shell as he helps Ann prepare for death. Maria de Madeiros (“Pulp Fiction”) provides comic relief as a hairdresser fixated on Milli Vanilla braids. Harry is solid as a disappointed woman who nonetheless continues to take chances, but an uncredited Alfred Molina is saddled with an awkwardly written scene as Ann’s dad.

“My Life Without Me” so easily could have been dreadful, but Coixet’s imaginative handling of her somewhat problematic material and a terrific cast make it worthwhile.

http://nitroflare.com/view/D192243BAEAE5A3/My_Life_Without_Me.mkv

https://publish2.me/file/1f21544fedbc5/My_Life_Without_Me.mp4

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English