The program of the Ibero-American Film Festival, scheduled in Oran this year from May 15 to 27, concerns about ten films in Spanish or Portuguese and from several countries, including, in addition to Spain and Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
The event will feature the presence of the Consul of Colombia, Mr. Giovanni Angel Guillén Mendoza, to present La estrategia del Caracol (The Snail Strategy), a film directed by Sergio Cabrera dating back to 1993 and depicting the inhabitants of a village. The old quarter of the capital Bogotá is facing a renovation project that does not suit them.
On May 25, it will be the turn of the Mexican ambassador in Algiers to present Roberto Girault's film Ilusiones SA, dating back to 2015. In this work, the main protagonist has to enlist the help of dream-making specialists to please an old woman waiting for her grandson to return, a deception inspired by a play called Los arboles mueren de pie (The trees die standing up) written by the Spanish playwright Alejandro Casona in the mid-20th century.
The event will also feature the presence of Venezuelan actress Irabe Seguya on May 26, who plays the lead role in Qué buena broma, Bromelia (What a good joke, Bromelia), a film directed by Efterpi Charalambidis released in 2021. The feature film in question tells the story of a woman who sees her life change after a shattered dream, but, as the organizers noted, the actress will finally be able to speak more generally about the cinema of her country.
For the rest of the program, we remember in particular No Céu da Pátria Nesse Instante (At this moment in the sky of Brazil) by Sandra Kogut, a documentary produced in 2023 that looks at the situation of this country during the pivotal period of the campaign. 2022 elections and the events that took place throughout the process, which revealed, as in the United States, deep divisions within society.
The screening is scheduled for Saturday, May 18. The following day, Sunday, Cuba is in the spotlight with the film Contigo Pan y Cebolla (With Bread and Onions) by Juan Carlos Cremat. This is also a film adaptation of a very popular play in Cuba. Desconectados (Offline) by Chilean director Diego Roger, scheduled for release on May 20, 2022, is a comedy-drama about internet addiction and the difficulties that this entails in family life.
The author imagines a solar storm that destroys geostationary communications satellites, depriving the world of internet access. There is also talk of an extraordinary cosmic event in the film A Màe é que Sabe (Mother Knows) by the Portuguese director Nuno Rocha, released in 2016 and scheduled for release on May 22. The extraordinary event in question allows you to enter parallel worlds and thus have the possibility of changing your life or not for a woman who has realized that all her life choices were dictated by her mother, who has died in the meantime.
From Spain and scheduled for release on Tuesday, May 21, the comedy Canallas (in English Monkey Business) by Daniel Guzmán, released in 2022, features a character who sees his situation going from bad to worse, in order to pay off his loan and avoid being evicted from his apartment.
There is also a change of direction in El método Tangalanga (The Tangalanga Way) by the Argentine Mato Bendesky, scheduled for release on May 27, but here through hypnosis magic works with a life that takes a rather funny turn. Las mejores familias (The best families) by the Peruvian Javier Fuentes León, scheduled for release on Thursday the 23rd, is about a secret that unites two families living in social conditions that are at opposite ends of each other.
