The lands of the sky This is the first feature film by Pablo García Canga (Madrid, 1981), a filmmaker with a long filmography of short and medium-length films whose career has developed in both Spain and France. The double bill, which brings together this first feature with the three short films presented separately—the latter three being Madrid premieres—is a good example of one of the central themes of his recent work: a cinema of words, in which narrative and the work with actors and actresses are conveyed through a refined mise-en-scène that reveals portraits.

"As the short film itself portrays, I cannot express in words (not yet, I still have everything at my fingertips) the full experience of what The night before It was for me. I could vaguely say that I thought about it. Anna's quotesChantal Akerman's film, and how in that one we so quickly understood Aurore Clément's state of mind simply by watching the rhythm with which she opens the curtains in the hotel room. There's something of that here, of the infinite faith that, when it's well done, cinema needs no introduction. I could say that I love cinema that trusts in words, in their capacity to bring emotions from another time into the (eternal) present, to evoke absent people and cities off-screen. I could say so many things, and yet those who read this will somehow be like the person on the other end of the phone. Anyway, please don't hang up. I'm here. I'm still thinking." (Cristhian Flores, Letterboxd) [Presentation and discussion with Bárbara Mingo Costales (writer), Fernanda Orazi (actress) and Pablo García Canga on the 30th; presentation and discussion with Pablo García Canga and Manuel Asín (programmer of the CBA) on the 4th]