2017 Ottawa Spanish Film Festival

SPAIN arts & culture and Bytowne Cinema present the latests trends in Spanish Cinema.

The Chess player

• On Wednesday, October 4 at 6:45 pm.
• Original title: El jugador de ajedrez.
• Directed by Luis Oliveros, 2017, 98 minutes. View trailer.

Diego Padilla (Marc Clotet) is crowned a world chess champion in Spain in the early 1930s. At the tournament, he meets Marianne Latour (Melina Matthews), a French journalist. They fall in love, get married, and have a baby. But with Spain in the midst of a violent civil war, Marianne convinces her husband to move to Paris. Shortly thereafter, despite his apolitical views, Diego is arrested for being a spy and sent to a prison run by the Nazis. His chess skills come to the attention of chess enthusiast Colonel Maier (Stefan Weinert), and fate offers Diego a chance to survive prison and the war, and to see his wife and daughter again.

The Olive Tree

• On Wednesday, October 11 at 6:45 pm.
• Original title: El olivo.
• Directed by Icíar Bollaín, 2016, 98 minutes. View trailer.

Alma, 20, works in a chicken farm by the village of Canet, in the province of Castellón, on the East coast of Spain. She has a profound connection with her dearly beloved grandfather despite the fact he has stopped talking years ago. But when he begins to refuse food too, Alma becomes obsessed with an idea: the only way to save her grandfather is to recover the 2000-year-old olive tree that the family uprooted and sold 12 years ago against his will.

Food and Shelter

• On Wednesday, October 18 at 6:45 pm.
• Original title: Techo y comida.
• Directed by Juan Miguel del Castillo, 2015, 90 minutes. View trailer.

Rocío is an unemployed single mother, who has difficulties meeting her daily food needs. She struggles to lead a normal life in fear of losing custody of Adrian, her eight-year-old son. But the situation gets worse when the owner of the flat she’s renting, also burdened by debts, reports her to the police for non-payment of the rent. Now time is against her and a solution appears impossible.

Gernika

• On Wednesday, October 25 at 6:45 pm.
• Directed by Koldo Serra, 109 minutes. View trailer.

1937 Spain: lines are being drawn, sides are being chosen… and the world will never be the same. As the citizens of the village of Guernica live with the day-to-day realities of the Civil War, an American journalist (James D’Arcy) secretly joins forces with a local press-office censor (María Valverde) to work against the stringent restrictions that are becoming more common. But everything changes when German forces attack the town, and the freedom of the press becomes a vital weapon. Based on the historical events of the bombing that set the stage for World War II.