The Best of Spanish Cinema

Joaquín is a computer engineer in wheelchair trapped by the imminent foreclose of his house due to the debt with his bank. Trying save it, he rents one room to Berta, an exotic dancer, and Betty, her six-years-old daughter. Meanwhile Joaquín is blocked emotionally by the remembers of his wife and daughter, dead after an accident time ago, Berta lives with the drama of Betty, who two years ago stopped to talk mysteriously. Their at the beginning uneasy coexistence gradually softens, turning in a friendship and a love interest between them, when Joaquín accidentally discovers that a little gang wants to steal a bank it causes that Joaquín decides to watch them in secret. But Joaquín's plan crashes against a couple of secrets that will threaten all the plan provided.

While playing outside one day, nine-year-old Michele discovers Filippo, who is chained to the ground at the bottom of a hole. Michele witnesses town baddie Felice nearby and suspects something bad is happening. Michele is unsure whom he should tell about his discovery, eventually spilling the beans to his closest friend.

In honor of his late wife who died in a flaming car accident, scientist, Dr. Robert Ledgard, is trying to synthesize the perfect skin which can withstand burns, cuts or any other kind of damage. As he gets closer to perfecting this skin on his flawless patient, the scientific community starts growing skeptical and his past is revealed that shows how his patient is closely linked to tragic events he would like to forget.

After the death of the blind Sara, who hanged herself in the basement of her house, her twin sister Julia suspects that she was actually murdered. Julia has a degenerative problem with her eyes and is losing her sight, and she temporarily moves with her husband Isaac to Sara's house to arrange her funeral. Julia goes to the Centro Baumann for the blind, which Sara frequented, and she learns from other members that Sara had a boyfriend. Julia is chased by a mysterious man, but police inspector Dimas does not believe her. Julia follows Sara's last steps trying to find the identity of her secret lover. Julia is surrounded by deaths and weird events while she loses her sight.

Apartment concierge Cesar (Luis Tosar) is a miserable person who believes he was born without the ability to be happy. As a result, he decides his mission is to make life hell for everyone around him. A majority of the tenants are easy to agitate, but Clara (Marta Etura) proves to be harder than the most. So Cesar goes to creepy extremes to make this young woman mentally break down. Things get even more complicated in this twisted relationship when her boyfriend, Marcos (Alberto San Juan), shows up.

2007. Manuel López-Vidal is a veteran Spanish politician and the right-hand of Frías, autonomous community's president (working as member of Spain's governing party), who he has an upper high-class lifestyle with his wife Inés and his teen daughter Nati. But behind of his long carrier and the respect of his party's partners and friends as Cabrera, Bermejo, Gallardo and Fernando, truth is totally different: Manuel is a crooked and corrupt man who since many years ago uses his politic position together his friends deviating foreign aids and getting money by means of any illegal way. When Gallardo is arrested accused of fraud and politic corruption, Manuel warms all his friends about to keep silence hoping that the police forgets the case by not founding new evidences. But when it's revealed in the newspapers that himself has been recorded in personal conversations talking about it, the fictional world of respect and honor created by Manuel falls down. With the elections closing the next year, the party closes ranks to save itself from the crisis: Frías distances from him to keep clean his name, the rest of partners blame him of their own corruptions and Manuel feels that there is a traitor close to him sending information to the police. Taking desperate measures, Manuel meets Alvarado, the newest politician of the party, to make a deal: give him all evidences he finds and Alvarado helps Manuel to avoid the jail. With time running out, Manuel starts a race against the clock to find evidences and proofs trying to ruin his former friends, looking for destroy the own party if he finally is found guilty in the incoming trial. But will can Manuel get these evidences to save himself before the party take extreme measures against him?

Luis, an unemployed literature teacher, is determined to grant what may be the last wish of Alicia, his 12-year-old daughter who is suffering from terminal leukemia: she dreams of owning the costume of Magical Girl Yukiro, her anime star. Unfortunately, the price tag is far beyond his means. But Luis is not one to give up easily, even if it means... abuse or blackmail.

In a squalid working-class cafe located in a barrio somewhere in Madrid, hard-working single mother Ana struggles to make ends meet as a bartender, living a simple and routine life with her only son. Patiently, for the past eight long years, Ana has been waiting for her criminal boyfriend Curro's release, while in the meantime, the unassuming and gentle Jose has already become a regular customer spending a lot of time in her cafe, quite obviously in fond of her. And then, one day, Curro is finally released, still violent and resentful after his long-lasting incarceration, threatening not only Ana's peace but also her tentative and fragile romance with Jose. Eventually, having no other choice but to escape, Ana will accept Jose's offer to live with her son in his secluded cottage, completely unaware though of quiet Jose's inscrutable and utterly impelling motives.

Accused of killing his brother during adolescence, Salvador lives isolated in the middle of Patagonia. After several decades without seeing, his brother Marcos and his sister-in-law Laura, come to convince him to sell the lands that they share by inheritance. The crossing, in the middle of a lonely and inaccessible place, revives the duel where the roles of victim and murderer are transformed over and over again.

Víctor is a child who is found casually roaming by a country road. His mother, Patricia, a well-known lawyer who specializes in media trials, soon learns of her son being found. Victor is taken to hospital and his mother soon follows, where it is explained by the mother that Víctor is deaf and mute, but can communicate using sign language which is why Victor didn't answer any of the questions asked by police. In the police headquarter Víctor explains that he was kidnapped by a strange man when he entered his school. The police identify a possible suspect named Charlie, a man with money troubles and an 8-month pregnant wife. Charlie is unable to explain where he was when Víctor was kidnapped. Patricia, seeing the inability of the police to arrest Charlie, contacts her former love interest and Victor's father, Raúl, starting a chain of events, the consequences of which will be out of control.

This film is centered around Vero, an Argentinean bourgeois woman, and how her life slowly twists out of control after she hits something, or someone, with her car. Here comes the incident that changes everything, as Vero is driving, she is distracted by her cell phone and looks down to get to it. By the time she does this, her car hits something but the camera stays in it as we see her car shaking and rattles. Although Vero seems indifferent about the situation, it is clear that it has a toll on it as she acts different from the Vero that we saw briefly at the beginning of the film. She acts clumsy and out of place, barely saying anything, and when she does, it doesn't always make sense or has a lot of substance. This solidifies towards the end of the movie when she is going to retrace her steps to remember her memory, but in the hospital and the Hotel she stayed in, there was no record proving that she was there. This makes the audience wonder if all this really happened or if Vero, for the lack of a better word, is crazy and everything happened in your head.

A Ukrainian woman named Irena calculatedly insinuates herself into the lives of a young, affluent Italian family. Stopping at nothing to become the couple's trusted maid and the beloved nanny to their fragile young daughter, Irena risks everything in her quest to uncover the truth about the family. Like an intricately constructed jigsaw puzzle, The Unknown Woman reveals piece by piece the enigma of Irena's past.

Recently separated from his wife Vera, Félix a young architect, embittered, he finds it difficult to trust again, and being fragile and emotionally unstable, he lives secluded in his now deafeningly silent and vacant house. Unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, a stranger knocks on Félix's door desperately in need of a phone call, and without giving it much thought, hesitantly, he lets him in, however, after a while, when the man is nowhere to be found, paranoia will strike. Has he left or is he still somewhere inside the house hiding? In the following days, as unexplained sounds and strange noises banish the mansion's silence amplifying the tension and the uneasiness, Félix will question his very reason as he will gradually begin hearing and seeing things in the dimly lit corridors. Is the intruder indeed real, or is he a manifestation inside the obscure maze of Félix's mind?

Early one morning, Marcos observes Juan successfully pulling off a bill-changing scam on a cashier, and then getting caught as he attempts to pull the same trick on the next shift. Marcos steps in, claiming to be a policeman, and drags Juan out of the store. Once they are back on the street, Marcos reveals himself to be a fellow swindler with a game of much higher stakes in mind, and he invites Juan to be his partner in crime. A once-in-a-lifetime scheme seemingly falls into their laps - an old-time con man enlists them to sell a forged set of extremely valuable rare stamps, The Nine Queens. The tricky negotiations that ensue bring into the picture a cast of suspicious characters, including Marcos' sister Valeria, their younger brother Federico and a slew of thieves, conmen and pickpockets. As the deceptions mount, it becomes more and more difficult to figure out who is conning whom.

The film is divided into six segments. (1) "Pasternak": While being on a plane, a model and a music critic realise they have a common acquaintance called Pasternak. Soon they discover that every passenger and crew member on board know Pasternak. Is this coincidence? (2) "The Rats": A waitress recognizes her client - it's the loan shark who caused a tragedy in her family. The cook suggests mixing rat poison with his food, but the waitress refuses. The stubborn cook, however, decides to proceed with her plan. (3) "The Strongest": Two drivers on a lone highway have an argument with tragic consequences. (4) "Little Bomb": A demolition engineer has his car towed by a truck for parking in a wrong place and he has an argument with the employee of the towing company. This event destroys his private and professional life, and he plots revenge against the corrupt towing company and the city hall. (5) "The Proposal": A reckless son of a wealthy family has an overnight hit-and-run accident, in which a pregnant woman gets killed. He wakes his parents up and his father calls the lawyer. The parents propose to pay the groundkeeper to take the blame for the boy. Soon the father discovers that he is a victim of extortion of his lawyer and the public prosecutor in charge of the investigation. What will be his decision? (6) "Until Death Do Us Apart": During the wedding party, the bride discovers that her newlywed husband has been cheating on her with one of the guests, and she decides to pay him back.

During the scorching summer of 2011 in bustling central Madrid, in the background of the imminent Papal visit, the metropolis pulsates with anticipation while thousands of pilgrims flock to the capital. However, something sinister is going on in the bowels of the city: a string of sex-related homicides have been taking place under the police's noses, nurturing a scandal that no one wants to break out. Under those circumstances, two investigators, the brilliant, yet eccentric Luis Velarde and the hot-headed loose cannon Javier Alfaro, must track down the sadistic, methodical serial killer in total secrecy. But to catch a killer, one must first keep his own demons at bay.

During IMF & World Bank Summit and demonstrations which upset Madrid, like other capitals, major corporation Dekia holds interviews to recruit a top executive from seven applicants. Their doubts start when they have to sign a clause accepting the Grönholm method, which nobody ever heard of. It soon becomes clear the tests are dirty mind games, but never what is true and what the trick. They must guess who among them is the HR mole, and repeatedly eliminate one of their number from the procedure. Their priorities, ethics and loyalty are put trough stressing tests.

Why is death and violence so fascinating? Is it morally correct to show violence in movies? If so, is there a limit to what we should show? That's the subject of Ángela's examination paper. She is a young student at a film school in Madrid. Together with the student Chema (who is totally obsessed with violent movies) they find a snuff movie in which a young girl is tortured and killed. Soon they discover that the girl was a former student at their school...