Ibero-American Film Festival 2022 brings best of cinema from Latin America, Spain and Portugal to the capital

The Embassy of Spain in India, in collaboration with Ibero-American Embassies, is organising the first-ever Ibero-American Film Festival in Delhi from June 24 to July 2, 2022 at Cinépolis, DLF Avenue Mall, Saket and Instituto Cervantes, Connaught Place. The festival is essentially a celebration of artistic and critically acclaimed films from the Ibero-American region i.e., Latin America, Spain and Portugal—a total of 16 films from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, México, Panamá, Perú, Portugal, Uruguay, Venezuela and Spain.

The opening film of the festival was Spain’s entry to the 2022 Academy Awards ‘El Buen Patrón' (The Good Boss) starring Javier Bardem in the lead role. The movie is a corporate satire and has won many awards including the Best Actor, Best Director, Best Film, and Best Original Screenplay at the 36th Goya Awards. Speaking at the inauguration of the festival, Chargée d’Affaires of the Embassy of Spain in India, Montserrat Momán Pampillo said, “This Festival is a result of long-standing collaboration among the Ibero-American Embassies in Delhi coming together to share our cultural heritage through cinema, with the large Indian audience of all ages. This Festival has been carefully curated by the Ibero-American Embassies in India with the purpose of opening a window to our sceneries, colors, emotions and values.”

Òscar Pujol, Director, Instituto Cervantes further explained, “This is the first Ibero-American Film Festival in India and the vision is to underline the importance of Ibero-American cinema as representing a geographical area still little known to India. Just as there is an Anglosphere there is also an Ibero-American sphere with more than 26 countries, whose influence is growing all over the world. This Ibero-American sphere speaks two major world languages: Spanish and Portuguese with 800 million speakers. Both Spanish and Portuguese are multinationals and multicultural languages. As in the case of India the Ibero-American sphere is characterized by a cultural diversity and a richness of cosmovisions that is not properly reflected in India.”

Some of the important movies on the festival lineup include ‘Encanto,’ ‘Inocencia,’ ‘Ana. Sem Titulo,’ ‘Porque Todas las Quiero Cantar,’ ‘Violeta al fin,’ ‘Arana,’ ‘Chicama,’ and ‘Porque Todas Las Quiero Cantar: Un Homenaje A La Canción Rochense,’ among others.

“The Spanish film ‘The Good Boss’ is an Indian premiere that was selected to represent Spain at the Oscars. Starring the well know actor Javier Bardem, it is an outstanding movie superbly directed by Fernando Leon de Aranoa who also wrote ‘Loving Pablo’ and ‘Mondays in the Sun’. Other premiere movies at the Festival are ‘A Film About Couples’ from Dominican Republic, ‘Humanpersons’ from Panama. We have to mention also ‘Inner Flash’ from Venezuela, ‘Spiders’ from Chile, ‘The Metamorphose of Birds’ from Portugal, ‘Ana Without Title’ from Brazil, ‘Güeros’ from México and. And a special mention to ‘Thinking of Him’ from Argentina, which outlines the relation between Rabindranath Tagore and the Argentinean writer Victoria Ocampo,” added Pujol

Pujol was of the opinion that the festival would contribute to the ongoing cinematic and cultural dialogue between India and Ibero-America. “Cinema is a universal and easily understood medium across cultures and goes straight to the heart of people. We hope that this festival will continue bringing to the Indian audience the taste, the colour and the ethos, often closer to the Indian ethos than the Anglo-Saxon and north European, of the people of Ibero-America,” summed up Pujol.