Un Amor at EUFF Ottawa 2024

In its 39th edition, the “European Union Film Festival in Ottawa” showcases films from 28 different countries, including the Spanish film “Un Amor.”

This year’s edition of the European Union Film Festival in Ottawa will run November 15-30 at Ottawa Art Gallery.

Acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet presents a complex feminist drama, based on the best-selling novel by Sara Mesa. The film received seven nominations at the 2024 Goya Awards, including Best Film, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Un amor

• Directed by Isabel Coixet, Spain, 2023, 129 minutes.
• In Spanish with English subtitles. Watch trailer.

Rundown by city life and a demanding job translating for African immigrants, the reckless 30-something Natalia (Laia Costa) decides to escape to the countryside. She rents a dilapidated house from a hostile landlord who refuses to make any repairs, yet she is determined to build a new life. Making friends with the wary locals proves difficult, and her only companion is a scruffy dog that came with the house. Desperate to fix the leaks in the roof, she reluctantly accepts a proposition from a neighbor known to the villagers as “the German” (Hovik Keuchkerian), a towering man who offers to make the repairs in exchange for sex. Although hesitant at first, she soon becomes involved in a passionate romance that challenges everything she thought she knew about herself.