Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival 2023

The 10th edition of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival takes place from 5 to 20 October 2023 and the full programme will be announced on Monday.

The festival features 17 films including seven debut features from Spain and Latin America with something for all ages.

The festival devotes a special place to commemorating the country’s journey to democracy from 1975 to 1982 with the 1976 film by the late Carlos Saura – Raise Ravens. One of the best examples of  cinema made during this historic period it will serve as a posthumous tribute to the legacy of the Spanish director who died earlier this year.

Audiences will have a second chance to catch three of the most recent Spanish commercial and critical hits: Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s powerful rural thriller The Beasts (2022), Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s debut film, the poignant family drama Lullaby (2022), and Fernando León de Aranoa’s sharp corporate satire The Good Boss (2021). Parents and their children will also be able to enjoy the latest Spanish family hit The Kids Are Alright 2 (2022) directed by Inés de León.  

Other versions of the festival will take place in Glasgow, Stirling and Inverness during the month.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Professor Nuria Capdevilla (director) will present three new shorts from her ongoing project CartasVivas which showcases the memories of twentieth-century Spanish women whose lives and work have remained largely unrecognized. On this occasion the shorts revolve around three Spanish women who were ardent defenders of women’s education and who had to flee  Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War.

A creative writing masterclass by Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, one of the most prolific writers on the Spanish transition is included in the programme. The subject of writing stories embedded in historical contexts. This will be followed by a screening of Backroads (1997), adapted from Pisón’s homonymous novel by the author himself and directed by Spanish auteur Emilio Martínez Lázaro. 

In collaboration with the Cervantes Chair, an extension of the Cervantes Institute in Manchester at the University of Edinburgh, there will be a Wine Tasting event featuring a selection of six wines from prestigious Galician company Bodegas Martín Códax. 

• Screening and Event Locations:
• Edinburgh: Institut Français Écosse / French Institute of Scotland (W Parliament Square), Odeon (118 Lothian Rd), Central Library (George IV Bridge)
• Tickets:
• Films: full price (£10), concession (£6)
• Wine Tasting: full price (£35), concession (£28)