13/02/2008

After its surprise performance at the latest Goya awards – where it swept up Best Film, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor – Solitary Fragments [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Jaime Rosales (see interview) was rescheduled for release in Spanish theatres.

Distributed on the same 30-print run as its original release by Wanda Visión on June 1, 2007, the film was seen by 17,000 moviegoers last weekend. This is nearly half the figures of the first time, when it garnered 41,000 admissions and €200,000 at the box office.

First screened at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Rosales’ second feature uses the split-screen technique to tell the daily dramas of five ordinary women from Madrid. Its unexpected triumph at the Goyas – it was up against the biggest hit of year, The Orphanage [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – was seen by many as a political statement of the Spanish Academy members to support arthouse films against the formalised and commercial cinema that has characterised local productions in recent years.

With the victory at the Goyas, Rosales has become the most prominent face of a group of independent filmmakers that he feels are planting the seeds of a movement. Other names pointed out by the director were Isaki Lacuesta (The Legend of Time - see interview), José Luis Guerin (En la ciudad de Sylvia [+see also:
trailer
film profile] - interview) and Marc Recha (August Days [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).