Amors on FIRE!! 2023

Love, Spells and All That, Eva + Candela and Surviving the Silence will dazzle us with the perseverance of their protagonists to live out their lesbian identity in both their private lives and in the public sphere. Lola vers la mer, Sedimentos and Homebody will surprise us with their original and very different ways of exploring the transgender world, from childhood to maturity. Then Vento seco, Suk Suk and Madame take us through the unexpected paths and stages of gay desire, also throughout a lifetime. An atypical, cinematic way to celebrate affective diversity on Valentine’s Day... and to explore, with unforgettable characters, a thousand ways to say “I love you”!

All the screenings are prefaced by a presentation of FIRE!! LGTBI Film Festival of Barcelona, by Casal Lambda.

 

Programme

Friday 10

17.00: Love, Spells and All That, Ümit Ünal, Turkey, 2020, 96’, original version with Spanish subtitles

When they were teenagers, Eren, the daughter of a powerful member of parliament, and Reyhan, the daughter of the caretaker of Eren’s family’s summer house on the island of Büyükada, in Istanbul, had a romance. When it came to light, Eren’s family forced them to separate. Reyhan and her father were sent away from the island, Eren was sent to boarding school in Europe, and the two women didn’t see each other again. Now, 20 years later, Reyhan has returned to the island, where she lives with a younger man. Meanwhile, Eren tracks her down on social media and decides to leave Europe and meet up with her again. The two spend a whole day travelling the island, exchanging passionate words and long-hidden feelings about the ramifications of their forbidden relationship in an attempt to lift the old spell, while taking a trip down memory lane.

 

19.30: Sedimentos, Adrián Silvestre, Spain/Italy, 2021, 90’, Spanish original version

Like the Earth, our interior is made up of different layers and strata that forge our identity and tell the story of our lives. What are the circumstances intervening in this process and making us what we are today? Six trans women travel to a small village in León where they explore unusual landscapes and the secrets of their own personality. As they search for what it is that unites them as a group, they learn to cope with their differences. A tender, funny story about empathy, individuality and the need to belong. An X-ray of the present that looks at the past and projects into the future, celebrating the extraordinary possibility of being unique and inimitable.

 

22.00: Vento seco, Daniel Nolasco, Brazil, 2020, 110’, original version with Catalan subtitles

The countryside around Catalão, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, is dry, very dry. Sandro’s life there is rather monotonous. He works in a fertilizer factory, plays football with his friends, goes swimming and spends his time doing jigsaw puzzles of landscapes. Sandro has a purely sexual relationship with his work mate Ricardo. He always feels a bit out of place and isn’t comfortable in his own skin, as though he doesn’t belong. When Maicon, a man straight out of a Tom of Finland drawing, turns up in their village and flirts with Ricardo, Sandro’s growing jealousy sets a change in motion.

 

Saturday 11

17.00: Surviving the silence, Cindy L. Abel, EUA, 2020, 80’, original version with Catalan subtitles

At the start of the 1990s, a highly decorated US colonel is forced to expel a heroine from the army for being a lesbian. What no one knows at this point is that very same colonel is a lesbian, though in the closet. Decades later, this fact comes to light with all its complexity, and the three women involved meet up again to reflect on these events and their impact. On this path, two of the women candidly review their lives together and talk about how they found love in a context of impossible choices. At the end of the film, they find something even more important and unexpected: their own voices as proud lesbians, senior social activists, and dynamic role models for others.

 

19.30: Suk Suk, Ray Yeung, Hong Kong, 2019, 92’, original version with Catalan subtitles

One day in the park, Pak, a 70-year-old taxi driver who refuses to retire, meets Hoi, a 65-year-old retired single father. Pak lives with his wife, and his pregnant daughter is about to get married. Since his divorce, Hoi has lived with his son, a devout Christian. Although both have concealed their dissident sexuality, they are proud of the families they have created with their hard work and determination. Yet this brief initial encounter unleashes something that had been repressed for many years. As the two men remember and recount their personal stories, they contemplate a possible future together. Suk Suk studies the subtle everyday moments of two men in the process of becoming senior citizens, fighting between the expectations imposed by Cantonese tradition and personal wishes.

 

22.00: Lola vers la mer, Laurent Micheli, France/Belgium, 2019, 90’, original version with Spanish subtitles

Lola is an 18-year-old trans woman. Just when she learns that she can finally have an operation, her mother, who is her only financial support, dies. To fulfil her last wishes, Lola and her father —with whom she is permanently in conflict and who she hasn’t seen for two years— set out on a trip to the Belgian coast and realise that the outcome might not be what they expected... Lola is played with a surprising sensibility by the transgender actress Mya Bollaers, who won the prestigious Magritte and Golden Ibis awards for this debut. Director Laurent Micheli brings a very tender touch to the genre of road movies that explore family relations and identity.

 

Sunday 12

17.00: Homebody, Joseph Sackett, USA, 2021, 75’, original version with Spanish subtitles

A child’s relationship with their nanny is always very special, but not as much as in the case of Johnny –nine years old, highly sensitive and nonbinary gender–, who obsessively adores his, Melanie. After finding a video on YouTube that shows how to extract the spirit from the physical body by means of Free Spirit Meditation, Johnny decides to transfer his spirit to the body of Melanie. He gets to see through her eyes, speak through her mouth and move with her body. It’s a dream come true: Johnny, turned into Melanie, is a woman for a day! But gradually the associated pressures of pretending to be another person build up, especially when his mother arrives home earlier than expected. Then Johnny has to negotiate the perils of the outside world as an adult woman: he has to manage the clothes and makeup, and possible flirtations, and even attend a birth as a doula. In this charming film fantasy, director Joseph Sackett brilliantly explores the expression of gender through a fresh, unpredictable lens in what is a hilarious and moving debut film.

 

19.30: Eva + Candela, Ruth Caudeli, Colombia/Spain, 2018, 92’, Spanish original version

Eva and Candela are two women who meet while pursuing a shared dream. The yearning that at first unites them, giving rise to a relationship full of love, passion and seduction, gradually begins to distance them. With the cinema as context, Eva + Candela tells the story of the two women through their life as a couple and their everyday routine. The passing years and the wearing thin of hopes and joys undermine the foundations of their relationship. Rather than telling a simple love story, it sets out in masterly fashion to represent the way love is transformed.

 

22.00: Madame, Stéphane Riethauser, Switzerland, 2019, 93’, original version with Catalan subtitles

Madame is Caroline, an outlandish 90-year-old grandmother who makes it quite clear that there is more to her than a nice hairdo and middle-class manners. The film focuses on the relationship with her grandson, filmmaker Stéphane Riethauser. Madame is a twofold self-portrait, in which the matriarch and her gay grandson confide in each other. With humour, but profoundly and with a great subversive force, the film deconstructs gender stereotypes and illustrates the saga of a middle-class family by means of some wonderful archive images. Stéphane Riethauser presents his intense journey through life: the difficulty of openly living his homosexuality, the imposition of patriarchal gender roles and efforts to turn them around in his personal, family and social life.

 

*Not recommended for under-18s.