Can you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Spanish democracy crashing down. The sound of the old regime, born after dictator Francisco Franco’s death, starting to decay. Yet, this disappearing process isn’t self-evident, and it surely isn’t necessarily joyful: the economic crisis has led to a political one. Cornered by neoliberal policies, cloistered in a country without a future, the population has begun to doubt this regime, born after 40 years of dictatorship and based on oblivion rather than forgiveness, continuity rather than justice, and economic powers rather than citizens.
The process has just started, and nobody knows how it will end, but in the meantime Spanish cinema —at least a part of it— has reacted by putting politics, and not only social issues, in the foreground. Maybe for the first time in Spanish history, filmmakers, in a collective and conscious way, have started to think and film politically, by...drawing not so flattering a portrait of their country’s past and present.
What is even more interesting is that they are doing so by rethinking cinematographic forms: production, distribution, and images questioning the portrait of Spain given by official discourse. These renewed images search for a future and wonder, together
with the audience: what is there to be done?
