The City of Lost Children 1995
A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.
A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.
In 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl living on the Castilian plain is haunted after attending a screening of James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein and hearing from her sister that the monster is not dead, instead existing as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn.
Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.
A woman recalls her childhood growing up in the North of Spain, focusing on her relationship with her father.
After the closure of their shipyard in Northern Spain, a few former workers: Santa, José, Lino, Amador, Sergei and Reina keep in touch. They meet mainly at a bar owned by their former colleague Rico. Santa is the most superficially confident and unofficial leader of the group. A court case hangs over him relating to a shipyard lamp he smashed during a protest against the closure. José is bitter that his wife, Ana, is employed when he is not.
Angela is a young waitress who turns her back on society when she meets and falls in love with Pablo, a reckless criminal delinquent. Along with Pablo’s gang of car thieves, the pair embark on a drug and disco-fueled robbery spree as they hurtle toward oblivion.
The young but traveled Ana arrives in a manor in the countryside of Spain to work as nanny of three girls and finds a dysfunctional family.
A man (José Luis López Vázquez) walks into a bar and shoots four people dead. Next day everybody is talking about the murders. The police know who the killer is and have his photo, but the man himself remains at large. Blanca (Serena Vergano), a lonely librarian, receives a letter from him, declaring his love for her. Apparently he has been a regular at the municipal library, although Blanca denies ever having noticed him.
Three veterans of the Spanish Civil War go rabbit hunting. While doing so, old wounds open up.
A small family of travelers arrives after a long journey at a village hut, which they claim as home. The family consists of Damian, a mute but skilled hunter, his wife Priscila, and their two children, a mute son named Pablo and a beautiful daughter named Agueda. Before long, Don Rodrigo, the feudal lord of the village, sets his sights on both Priscila and Agueda.
Ana and her husband Antonio arrive in the manor in the countryside of Spain where she worked as a nanny many years ago, for the centennial birthday of the matriarch.
Bored 15-year-old school chums Rai Manu and Javi dream of sexual adventures and exotic resorts while the well-off population of Madrid flock to the beaches on a summer holiday. The youths hang around the concrete wasteland killing time by reading the sex classifieds and pushing their luck. They masturbate, thieve, fight with their families and get involved in a drug bust. Finally Rai, the most daring and restless of the trio - gets shot while trying to steal stereo gear from a car. Each adolescent faces a dreary home life but when they get together they enjoy each other's company to the full. The film is an engaging mixture of comedy drama and the pathos of life in a Madrid neighborhood.
When the single middle-aged Luis travels from Barcelona to bury the remains of his mother in the vault of his family in Segovia, he is lodged by his aunt Pilar in her old house where he spent his summer of 1936 with her. He meets his cousin Angelica, who was his first love, living on the first floor with her husband and daughter, and he recalls his childhood in times of the Spanish Civil War entwined with the present.
Carlos is a young student, just 21. Nice or annoying as he likes, enjoys provoking and transgreding. In the night he goes out to meet his friends in the Kronen, a bar. Every situation can be taken a little farther. There are no limits, no accepted barriers. And more each time, each adventure is chained to the next, as if it were a continuous night. A long description of people: grandfather, parents, sister, girlfriend, friends. And, among that, the obscure will of living every minute as if it were the last one. But something which happens puts Carlos and his friend against a reality they have been trying to ignore.
Julián, a middle-aged single doctor, is reunited with Pablo, a childhood friend who has just married Elena, a beautiful young woman.
The greedy relatives of a paralysed 45-year-old amnesiac millionaire go to extreme lengths to help him recover his memory.
José, a fifty-year-old homosexual magician, feels the need to return to Granada, the place where he spent his childhood, perhaps to embrace the painful memory of tragic experiences, perhaps to bury it definitively.
This film is a documentary about the poet Leopoldo Panero. His widow and his sons talk about death in general in this special case, and also about their own family problems.
Miguel is a married architect with children; Blanca, an attractive young woman who has attempted suicide by cutting her veins. The relationship between them develops through continuous persecutions, first of him to her and then to him. In their meetings, they reflect on their empty lives, loneliness, boredom and obsession with death.
Juan Sahagún, since childhood, feels passion for his mother. One day in the street he sees a woman identical to her. He follows her and finds out that she works as an actress in a theater company, so Juan decides to hire the whole company to represent the people who have influenced him in his past. They recreate the same situations of yesteryear and Juan acts as the child he was, to relive the memories already forgotten.