Three Catalan documentary productions will compete in the Official Section of the DocsBarcelona 2024 International Documentary Film Festival and nine more will compete in the new Docs&Cat section. A total of twelve titles make up the DocsBarcelona’s “firmest commitment to the Catalan creative talent and industry, with which the event vindicates the particular look that Catalan cinema dedicates to the documentary genre,” organisers write.
The 27th edition of the DocsBarcelona will take place from May 2 to 12 at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and the Cinemes Renoir Floridablanca.
Docs&Pearls Competition
The official Docs&Pearls competitive section will feature Patricia Franquesa’s second feature film, the documentary thriller My Sextortion Diary (selected by South by Southwest), in which the Catalan director shows how her world changes due to blackmail after having her computer stolen. In addition, Adrián Silvestre’s newest film May Your Will Be Done, which recently premiered at the Thessaloniki Festival, takes the pulse of the microcosm of the filmmaker’s family and the invisible ties that bind them together. The DocsBarcelona selection also includes Sissel Morell Dargis and her debut feature Balomanía, a portrait of Brazil and the clandestine culture of illegal hot air balloon gangs. The film has just world-premiered at CPH:DOX.
Nine Catalan documentaries in the new section Docs&Cat
This year the festival will program a new competitive section Docs&Cat, which will include nine Catalan productions competing for a new prize of €3,000, sponsored by La Xarxa Audiovisual Local (XAL) and awarded by the Docs&Cat Jury. Four of these films will have their world premiere at DocsBarcelona.
- Casa Reynal by Laia Manresa, about family transmission and the legacy of memory
- Breathe, Mom by Meri Collazos, a story about the right to breathe clean air
- Unbound by John English and Tom Garner, about a group of dancers who survive the abuses of the dance world and their struggle to regain confidence and the stage
- A Shooting Star by Ignasi Guerrero and Arturo Mendiz, which brings to the screen perinatal grief from the father’s point of view.
Two award-winning titles arrive from the Málaga Film Festival. The documentary Binu: A Two-Star Story by Guillem Cabra and Mar Clapés, about owners of the first restaurant in a village to obtain two Michelin Stars, which is now experiencing a second boom. The film won the Jury Prize in the ‘Cine Cocina’ section, while Pepi Fandango by Lucija Stojevic (La Chana), received a Special Mention from the Jury. The Croatian director accompanies a Holocaust survivor on her journey from Vienna to Andalusia to confront her conflictive relationship with the most authentic flamenco, which she knew during her childhood in the Nazi camps in the South of France.
In The Click Trap, Peter Porta delves into the dark side of online advertising, a lucrative business with a high human cost that threatens the stability of our democracies. Science Fiction by Francisco Forbes and Ferran Romeu, portrays a scientist, Laurence Burton, pursuing his lifelong dream: to build an airplane powered only by clean energy.
Completing the new section is the Catalan production Burden by Miguel Eek, which tackles a taboo by proposing an unprecedented vision of emotional, physical and sexual violence against men. The documentary, which will premiere in Spain thanks to DocsBarcelona, accompanies thirteen men on a retreat in a forest in Mallorca to begin a process of individual and collective healing.
“Local talent is still alive and powerful”
The DocsBarcelona’s Artistic Director, Anna Petrus, emphasises that “accompanying and promoting Catalan documentary talent is one of DocsBarcelona’s most important commitments.” She adds “that’s why we hope that the festival’s audiences will be enthusiastic about the programming of the Docs&Cat section and the three films competing in the international Docs&Pearls section. They are documentaries that show that local talent is still alive and powerful.”
