Catalan Film Festival, 25th Nov – 12th Dec 2021

Images from films playing at the 2021 Catalan Film Festival

The Catalan Film Festival is back for another edition, with Cinemaattic again utilising a hybrid model of in-person screenings in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee, and an online version running in parallel. The programme can be found here and there are also further details on their website.

The online festival is hosted on FestHome, and has almost all of the films from the in-person sessions. There are two programmes of shorts and five feature-length films, including the latest features by the two filmmakers in focus this year, Clara Roquet and Meritxell Colell. You can pay for a programme of shorts, the focus on a specific filmmakers (which includes their short films), or an individual feature, but the festival pass (giving you access to everything) is a very reasonable 15€.

Catalan Film Festival, 19th Nov-6th Dec 2020

Catalan Film Festival 2020

Well, this is something nice in 2020! Cinemaattic are simultaneously holding their Catalan Film Festival at various locations in Scotland and online between 19th November and 6th December.

The programme offers a range of new and classic features, four programmes of shorts, and a series of talks/Q&As – all of which will be available online. You can buy tickets for strands of films (the links are within the programme page), or a festival pass that covers everything will only set you back £10/11€. I have bought one of those – for more than two weeks of access, and the sheer number of films, that’s really good value.

It looks like an admirably diverse set of titles. I’m hoping that I will manage to catch Luis López Carrasco’s El año de descubrimiento (which I mentioned way back last year, and have already missed at least one chance of watching – I will confess that my patience with very long films is somewhat diminished of late but I’ll try not to let that put me off), and I’ve also heard good things about My Mexican Bretzel (dir. Nuria Giménez Lorang), and Las niñas (dir. Pilar Palomero – who also has a retrospective of her shorts). I will watch as many of the shorts as I can because they are something that I’ve missed since I stopped attending film festivals.