- Goya winner Belén Funes’ second feature, Sara Fantova’s debut film or Gala del Sol’s punk fantasy stand out in this 2025 selection
- Pieces such as María Herrera’s, or the ones co-directed by Mar Nantas, Juno Álvarez and Yaiza de Lamo, and Miguel Ángel Blanca and Jesús Manresa Puche, show the boldness and freshness of Spanish new cinema
- The section also includes Emilio Hupe and Paula Veleiro’s work, which revolve around family and memories
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Saturday, April 26, 2025.- Panorama Spain is a section designed to gather and show the newest and most alternative national film production within the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival. Starting tomorrow, April 27, at Cine Yelmo Las Arenas, the audience will find in it different pieces displaying some of the most daring and brazen filmmaking. Thus, the Festival, which runs until May 4, will offer through this competitive section a trend-setting array of filmmakers who, with their work, redefine the boundaries of cinema.
Panorama Spain programs six different screenings in 2025
On Sunday, April 27, the audience will be able to attend the first showing of Invasión pequeña / Small Invasion (Spain, 2024, 60 min.), by Miguel Ángel Blanca, who returns to the Festival with a powerful documentary-format piece he has made in collaboration with Jesús Manresa Puche; as well as the first screening of Llueve sobre Babel / Rains over Babel (Spain, Colombia, USA, 2024, 113 min.), by Gala del Sol, a film described at Sundance as “a Colombian steampunk tropical fantasy” that invites us to revisit Dante’s inferno through a queer lens. Celina Biurrun, one of its lead actresses, will come to the Gran-Canarian capital, too.
At the beginning of the week, on Monday, April 28, the Festival has programmed a double screening comprising the short film El viento que golpea mi ventana / The Wind Hitting My Window (Spain, 2025, 26 min.), by Emilio Hupe, and the medium-length film Te separas mucho / The Distance You Left (Spain, 2024, 67 min.), by Paula Veleiro. Both works revolve around family, loved ones, memories, letters and the most personal on-screen testimonies.
That day, too, the Festival will show María Herrera’s El cuento de una noche de Verano / A Midsummer Night’s Tale (Spain, 2024, 22 min.), a complex short film encouraging debate that will be followed by the feature film La revolución de las musas / The Revolution of the Muses (Spain, 2024, 62 min.), by Mar Nantas, Juno Álvarez and Yaiza de Lamo. Theirs is a radical piece questioning the patriarchal gaze that has shaped the history of art and cinema, and in which the boundaries between documentary and fiction are dissolved.
On Tuesday, April 29, Panorama Spain will show Los Tortuga / The Exiles (Spain, Chile, 2024, 109 min.). Belén Funes, winner of the Goya Award for Best New Director with her film La hija de un ladrón (2019), presents her second feature here after having obtained three awards at the Malaga Film Festival. This is the story of some Andalusians immigrants who have found a new home in Catalonia, and stars Antonia Zegers and Elvira Lara as a mother and daughter forced to stand their ground in the face of grief and adversity.
And finally, that same day is scheduled Jone, Batzuetan / Jone, sometimes (Spain, 2025, 79 min.), Sara Fantova’s debut that has already received a special mention in Malaga. Her film takes us to the whirlwind of Bilbao’s ‘Great Week’, when Jone will experience a summer that will change everything: first love, the weight of adult responsibility and that effervescent feeling that life is about to begin.
This whole selection of Panorama Spain programmed in the 24th edition of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival proves “how the singularity of Spanish cinema flourishes year after year,” according to what Elodie Mellado says in the catalog. There are many reasons for this evolution, but the main one is, for Mellado, “the wealth of our young and restless filmmakers and their relentless pursuit of new cinematic frontiers. Some, by swimming against the tide of an industry that can be ruthless to the most original voices; others, working from within to dismantle long-standing barriers that hold firm.”
The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival, organized by the Culture area of the Gran-Canarian capital’s City Council through Promoción de la Ciudad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, has received public assistance by the ICAA [Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts], the Visitors’ Program for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE), of the Spanish Public Agency for Cultural Action (AC/E), as well as public support from Promotur Turismo Islas Canarias.
Among the Festival’s collaborators we may find Fundación Auditorio Teatro, Cines Yelmo, Las Arenas Shopping Center and Hotel Cristina by Tigotan, places which also function as venues or hold activities of the film event; as well as other institutions and companies such as Sagulpa, Toyota, Royal Bliss, Fuze Tea, Coca Cola, Sholeo Lodge, Audiovisuales Canarias, Music Library &SFX, Blackout Films and International Bach Festival. Likewise, its market, MECAS, has been possible thanks to the sponsorship of the Gran Canaria Film Commission-Sociedad de Promoción Económica de Gran Canaria and the support of Proexca.
The University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the Mid Atlantic University, Digital 104, the Audiovisual Cluster of the Canary Islands, the Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media CIMA, the Cartagena International Film Festival, the Gijón International Film Festival, the Barcelona Independent Film Festival, the Tres Puertos Laboratory, Barcelona’s ESCAC, and Very Good Script, Freak World and Fimucité are also collaborators.
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