The FanCineQueer. Infancias films in this series will be available on the Cervantes Institute’s Vimeo channel, link below, for 96 hours, starting at 2:00 am.
Cervantes Institute’s Vimeo HERE
The Cervantes Institute joins the celebration of LGTBIQ+ culture by presenting a program of short films co-organized with the Extremadura festival FanCineQueer.
FanCineQueer. Infancias Screening:
Cocodrilo– Thursday, June 6, 2024
Elsa – Monday, June 10, 2024
El rey de las flores – Thursday, June 13
17 minutos con Nora – Monday, June 17:
Cristiano – Thursday, June 20
La acampada – Monday, June 24
El Dance Off – Thursday, June 27
This online film series focuses on different stories that bring us closer to the everyday lives of children and young people of different status and backgrounds, who face life from a starting position dominated by questioning and difficulties in their definition of gender.
The different formats and genres presented in this program also speak of the narrative and aesthetic richness of this monographic thematic cinema that allows its authors to address the social vulnerability and the hard search for identity that is always present during this period in the life of every person, and especially in those who defy normativity.
Cocodrilo
Jorge Yúdice’s career as a director took a surprising leap forward with Cocodrilo, which was selected for the Berlinale and received an excellent reception at multiple festivals and screenings. The subtlety with which a past story is told and the way in which his characters communicate shows the drive of a great screenwriter whose first feature film is already awaited.
Alicia, like every afternoon, makes herself a cup of tea and watches her favorite YouTube channel: VictorGaming, dedicated to action role-playing video games. Victor, the youtuber, broadcasts today a live stream where fans can ask him questions. Alicia has something very important to tell him.
Screening: Cocodrilo; Director/s: Jorge Yúdice; Year: 2019; Format: Digital; Running time: 5 min; Genre: Fiction; Country: Spain; Original version: español; Subtitles: English, French. Portuges, Italian; Rated: TP
*****
Elsa
Disney’s imaginary serves the director and actor Albert Carbó to talk about transgender children through his own production company, which he created to work on social issues that help to mediate and make their realities visible in a complex way.
Elsa is a six-year-old girl who, like anyone her age, wants to live happily and freely. She knows she is different from the majority, but despite her young age she is clear about things: she knows she is a girl and that she is the queen of her life.
Screening: Elsa; Director: Albert Carbó; Year: 2021; Format: Digital; Running time: 12 min; Genre: Fiction; Country: Spain; Original version: catalán; Subtitles: English, French. Portuges, Italian; Rated: TP
*****
El rey de las flores
The first short film by actor and director Alberto Velasco offers a double look at tradition, which is posed as a place that can welcome everyone or reject them decisively. The story of Victor, the center of the narrative, grows as does his inner rage and, in doing so, the director starts from an imaginary of joy and nature to arrive at a somber place of closure.
Victor, ten years old, loves popular folklore. He already knows what it means that what you like most in the world, which in his case is dancing, is what hurts you the most. His mother works tirelessly and also takes care of his bedridden stepfather day and night, but with a lively, sharp and hurtful tongue every time Victor comes through the door. When Victor dances, he transforms, laughs, dreams and escapes from the reality at home. What he could never imagine is that the same violence he received would be his own salvation.
Screening: El rey de las flores; Director: Alberto Velasco; Year: 2021; Format: Digital; Running time: 13 min; Genre: Fiction; Country: Spain; Original version: español; Subtitles: English, French. Portuges, Italian; Rated: +16
*****
17 minutos con Nora
The name Nora is indisputably linked to Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, where the whole inner world of women subjected to an external and oppressive law is revealed. Taking this reference as a clear evocation and with Lucas Hnath’s re-reading, this short film by director Imanol Ruiz de Lara leads to a long-delayed conversation between a father and a son, in which all the humanity that is always behind the sudden understanding of the other is condensed.
Nora is nervous because the next day she is performing in a play at her high school, but the insults of her classmates at the door of her house cause her to face something more important to her: that her father accepts her as she is. In seventeen minutes the relationship between the two will change forever.
Screening: 17 minutos con Nora; Director: Imanol Ruiz de Lara; Year: 2021; Format: Digital; Running time: 18 min; Genre: Fiction; Country: Spain; Original version: español; Subtitles: English, French. Portuges, Italian; Rated: +12
*****
Cristiano
Comedy is a genre that always surprises us because it highlights characteristics of reality that we would not always call laughable. In this interpretative duel between Nacho Guerreros and Iván Vigara, the terrain is even more slippery as it is a debate that moves from the theological to the personal.
Cristiano is a devout young man who wants to be trained in the seminary to become a Catholic priest, with the surprise that the interviewer responsible for vocations is the former priest of his village, Avelino, an unconventional priest who defines himself as a “modern man”. Just before Avelino approves his enrollment in the seminary, Cristiano confesses his most intimate secret, a secret that will determine whether or not he will be able to become a priest.
Screening: Cristiano; Director/s: Adán Pichardo; Year: 2021; Format: Digital; Running time: 11 min; Genre: Fiction; Country: Spain; Original version: español; Subtitles: English, French. Portuges, Italian; Rated: +12
******
La acampada
The social emergence of issues related to mental health shows how these types of conditions, which have always been erased from the public agenda, have come to light to demystify their nature and make their problematic nature evident. This short film – supported by Indetectables, the project of the NGO Apoyo Positivo, which focuses on sexual health and the fight against discrimination of the LGTBIQ+ collective – shows us, through the eyes of a minor who has to take care of his mother, how this is a problem that plagues many adolescents.
Two days in the life of a trans adolescent boy and his sick mother. It is an intimate portrait of a single-parent family, mental illness and caregiving.
Screening: La acampada; Director/s: Afioco Gnecco y Enrique Cervantes; Year: 2022; Format: Digital; Running time: 22 min; Genre: Fiction; Country: Spain; Original version: español; Subtitles: English, French. Portuges, Italian; Rated: SC
*****
El Dance Off
Filmed in Chacomús (Argentina), this short film is offered as a love letter to Latin American queer culture and magical realism, which is so closely linked to the idiosyncrasies of this territory. The way in which the characters suffer the patriarchal tradition, so tinged with intransigence and dogmatism, is transgressed in this story that breaks with the expectations of its own generic code.
At a silent gas station on the outskirts of a rural town, young Ernesto dreams of becoming a dancer. It is not until his magical dance-off with a desolate drag queen that the boy discovers the courage to make his dreams a reality.
Screening: El Dance Off; Director: Nicolás Keller Sarmiento; Year: 2023; Format: Digital; Running time: 13 min; Genre: Fiction; Country: Argentina; Original version: español; Subtitles: English, French. Portuges, Italian; Rated: SC
