Now in its 29th year, Manchester’s Viva! festival returns for its annual celebration of Spanish and Latin American culture, bringing with it a programme of exciting cinema from across the Spanish-speaking world.
In 2023, the festival will showcase 25 new feature films, including multiple UK cinema premieres, along with filmmaker Q&As, film introductions and other opportunities to get involved.
As well as this, there’ll be plenty of archive cinema treats – two classics from Juan Antonio Bardem, the UK premiere of 1970s hidden gems by fellow Spaniard Cecilia Bartolomé, and a programme of shorts from Latin American feminist film collectives.
The full festival programme will be announced in the new year, but HOME shared that the festival’s opening night will feature the UK premiere of a joyous coming-of-age comedy from Spain, (Full of Grace, Roberto Bueso, 2022).
Directed by Roberto Bueso, the film follows an unusual nun as she begins working in a school being threatened with closure. She’s welcomed into the school by pranks from its boarders, but soon decides to set up a football team with the view to change it all.
With the help of two other nuns, Angelines, innocent and fragile, and Tatiana, rough and kind, they together create something like a real family.
The festival is curated by Rachel Hayward, Head of Film Strategy, Jessie Gibbs, ¡Viva! Festival Coordinator, and Andy Willis, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and HOME’s Senior Visiting Curator: Film.
With additional programme support from the Instituto Cervantes, the Leading Women project funded by the AHRC, and the Invisible Women archive activist film collective.
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