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One more year, we are extremely proud to present the best selection of Catalan short films that will travel around international film festivals. Strong female characters living in powerful aesthetics and no-name heroes facing different kinds of invisible violence are part of the following outstanding selection. These new authors play with the form and give an air of freshness to each of the films, without forgetting a modern formal approach and an approximation to new narratives. This Shortcat 2021 selection brings the New Catalan Wave to a next level. We are very grateful with this year’s Jury for the brilliant task they’ve done during this selection. We are very honoured and we sincerely thank to Cosimo Santoro (The Open Reel), Èrika Sánchez (Antivaho Cinematográfico), Mireia Graell (Ringo Media), Stefan Ivancic (Locarno International Film Festival - International Film Festival Rotterdam), Alice Kharoubi (Festival de Cannes) and special thanks to Queralt Pons (film consultant).
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Queralt, a painter from Barcelona, tries to talk to her daughter Gemma on the phone. Gemma is starting a new life in Athens, in a studio where she paints and lives. Ella i jo is a film featuring the paintings of Roser Agell and Paulina Muxart.
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Ella i jo Drama | 20’ | Catalan
INTERNATIONAL TITLE: Her and I
FILM EDITING: Maria Castan, Jaume
DIRECTED BY Jaume Claret Muxart
Claret Muxart
PRODUCED BY Jaume Claret Muxart
SOUND DESIGN: Oriol Campi
PRODUCER: Jaume Claret Muxart
SOUND: Mario Sanz
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER:
ART DIRECTOR: Sandra Prat, Paulina
Jorge Claret Martí
Muxart, Joan Beà
SUPPORTED BY Elías Querejeta
MAIN CAST: Anna Muxart Agell, Ma-
Zine Eskola
riona Martín, Mathieu Honorat, Tristan
SCREENPLAY: Jaume Claret Muxart
Honorat Martín
DOP: Marina Palacio, Bernat Bonaventura
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“The film was born at a time when I became aware of the existence of some letters that my grandmother, Roser Agell, wrote to her daughter, my aunt, Paulina Muxart, when she was in Athens. These letters were written in Barcelona and read in Greece. Letters between two female painters. This is a film that talks about the long-distance relationship between a mother (played by my mother) and daughter, who only communicate through painting (or radio). This film is the first part of a trilogy about three generations, family relationships, work and communication: Ella i jo (2020), Ell i jo (2022), Jo (2024)�. JAUME CLARET MUXART
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Jaume Claret Muxart
Jaume Claret Muxart (Sant Cugat del Vallès, 1998) is a Catalan filmmaker who was part of the first generation of the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. His works include Ella i jo, which premiered at SSIFF San Sebastian Film Festival. He teaches a master’s degree in design and production of
spaces at the UPC and CCCB. He is a member of Arquitectura Filmada, a studio that produces architectural videos. He is currently developing his first feature film, Estrany Riu, and the second part of the trilogy about three generations, family, work and communication that started with Ella i jo.
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Farrucas Drama | 17’ | Spanish, Arabic
DIRECTED BY Ian de la Rosa
DOP: Gina Ferrer
PRODUCED BY Vayolet Films –
FILM EDITING: Marc Esteve Escrihuela
Primo – Amplitud
MUSIC: El Chiche, El Canelita
SALES AGENT: Marvin & Wayne
SOUND DESIGN: Carnaby Studios
PRODUCER: Carlotta Schiavon, Inés
SOUND: Curro Burguillo
Massa, Jana Diaz Juhl, Pau Brunet
ART DIRECTOR: Anna Cornudella
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Carlotta
Castro
Schiavon, Inés Massa, Cristina Moreno
MAIN CAST: Hadoum Benghnidira
Cuesta, Claudio Baccigalupo, Guada-
Nieto, Fatema Benalghani Bousrij,
lupe Arensburg Caellas
Sheima El Haddad Bousrij, Sokayna
SCREENPLAY: Ian de la Rosa, Jana
El Assri
Diaz Juhl
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Hadoum, Fátima, Sheima and Sokayna are four teenagers from El Puche, a suburb in the Spanish city of Almería, who are proud of their Moroccan and Spanish roots. Together they navigate their first experiences in out-of-the neighbourhood schools, which evidence their underprivileged environment. However, this does not affect the intensity of their desires and dreams. On Fatima’s eighteenth birthday, the strength of their self-confidence will be put to the test.
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“The Andalusian intellectual Antonio Manuel established that the etymological origin of the word “farruca” is the Andalusian Arabic term “faruqa”, which refers to a person capable of distinguishing truth from deceit. I wanted to make Farrucas so as not to forget. I wished to look deep into the roots of my land and its connection with the richness of its present. El Puche, a place with which I had a personal connection, was where our deep cinematographic inquiry began. What I found struck me through the strength of its protagonists. Hadoum, Fatima, Sheima and Sokayna gifted us a life lesson: that home just exists in the hugs and smiles that you dedicate to your sisters, whether connected by blood or not. It is the chosen family, the community, that allows us to resist the walls of fear. It is only thanks to that strength, emerging from the awareness of our roots and origins, that we can look at ourselves in a mirror and recognise and celebrate our truth”. IAN DE LA ROSA
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Ian de la Rosa Having graduated with a degree in Film Directing from the ESCAC - Cinema and Audiovisual School of Catalonia, Ian de la Rosa (Granada, 1988) received one of the Cannes Cinéfondation Awards for his final degree project Victor XX. His first short film as a producer, Porque la sal, premiered at Visions du Réel. In 2019, the filming of the hybrid short film Farrucas began. Meanwhile, de la Rosa was part of the writers’ room for the Atresmedia
series Veneno, a biopic about a pioneer trans woman, one of the most popular in Spain. At this time, he also participated as an actor in the play Trans (més enllà), which premiered at the prestigious Festival d’Avignon. In 2020, with the help of the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), de la Rosa completed Farrucas. He is currently working on the script for his first feature film, Aceituna.
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DIRECTED BY Gerard Ortín Castellví PRODUCED BY Gerard Ortín Castellví - àngels barcelona SCREENPLAY: Gerard Ortín Castellví DOP: Gerard Ortín Castellví FILM EDITING: Gerard Ortín Castellví SOUND DESIGN: Oriol Campi Solé WITH THE SUPPORT OF: The Elephant Trust Goldsmiths Time Based Media Lab
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Future Foods Experimental Documentary | 20’ | English
This film revolves around the making of plastic food at the workshops of Replica LTD, one of the few UK based companies that still manufactures props for films, advertisements and displays. The perception of food, its appealingness, and palatability through a constructed image, come into play when observing these hand-crafted manufacturing processes through a camera. A phone conversation with the CEO of a Finnish future foods’ startup introduces us to a cutting edge technology consisting of the production of a new protein generated from water, electricity and CO2 captured from the air. Solein is a new technology that speculates with a near-future without agriculture and land-use effects.
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“My work explores the intersections between technology and ecology through artistic and experimental filmmaking. In a context of accelerated environmental transformations and after having transgressed four of the nine planetary boundaries – including nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, the effects of land use, and loss of biodiversity – there is an urgent need to update and problematise our current system. My artistic practice proposes a critical framework for analysing the role of technology in industrial modes of production, distribution, and consumption, addressing ecological inquiries through the moving image and experimental film.” GERARD ORTÍN CASTELLVÍ
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Gerard Ortín Castellví Gerard Ortín Castellví (Barcelona, 1988) is an artist and filmmaker. After completing an MFA at Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam), he finished an MA in Artists’ Film and Moving Image at Goldsmiths University, London, where he is currently doing a PhD. He has recently shown his work at Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), LUX (London) and exhibited at Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona), Tabakalera (Donostia-San Sebastián), Stedelijk Museum
Buro of Amsterdam (Amsterdam), the Office for Contemporary Art (Oslo), Open (Reykjavík) and Seager Gallery (London). His works have been screened in venues including the Anthology Film Archives (NY), Zumzeig Cinecooperativa (BCN), and Numax (Santiago de Compostela). His last film Reserve, received a mention for the best short at the 42nd edition of Festival Cinéma du Réel (Paris).
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L’Estrany Drama | 18’ | Catalan
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Amadeu, a 9-year-old boy, is going to summer camp for the first time. The first few days are hard, but with the help of Nil, the most experienced monitor, he manages to become part of the group. Nil, in an intimate moment, sexually abuses Amadeu.
INTERNATIONAL TITLE: The Strange
DOP: Agnès Piqué Corbera
DIRECTED BY Oriol Guanyabens Pous
FILM EDITING: Juliana Montañés,
PRODUCED BY Fractal 7 - Corte y
Ariadna Ribas
Confección de Películas
MUSIC: Ferran Palau
SALES AGENT: Agencia Freak
SOUND DESIGN: Eloy Rodríguez
PRODUCER: Marc Guanyabens, Oriol
SOUND: Lucas Mathias
Maymó, Carlus Solano
ART DIRECTOR: Elena Ponsoda,
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Marc
Martí Pavia
Guanyabens, Carlus Solano
MAIN CAST: Gerard Pous,
SCREENPLAY: Oriol Guanyabens Pous
Arnau Comas
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“At a time when, fortunately, people are beginning to talk publicly about the sexual abuse of minors, it is pertinent and especially important to put real emotions into these stories. We approach the narrative in a sensitive and raw way, with a naturalistic perspective, almost as if it were a real documentary. However, the very nature of the story subtly takes the film’s aesthetic into other territories. Starting from naturalism, we gradually enter the psychology of a child whose perceptions have become disassociated from reality. We overcome the suggestion and the fable through organicity, taking us into a space of transcendence, abstraction and doubts - which is also where Amadeu finally lives.” ORIOL GUANYABENS POUS
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Oriol Guanyabens Pous Oriol Guanyabens Pous is a screenwriter, film director, actor and performer. He has worked in all filming departments, especially in artistic direction and casting direction, which is his main occupation nowadays. He has directed and co-directed theatre pieces,
experimental short films and several video clips. The Strange is his first fictional short as a screenwriter and director. He is currently working on the script for his first film, The Normal, and on Max Estrella, his first television series.
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Las Infantas
Carnival in Barcelona. The Dominican troupe is the most popular at the best-attended parade in the city and, for the first time this year, they are parading with a float. Ruth, the owner of a Latin hairdresser’s, is sponsoring the float, so that she can put her daughter Rihanna in it. Rihanna usually dresses like a tomboy and Ruth wants everyone to see her like a princess for once. But the tutu and tiara are an unbearable embarrassment for the previously submissive Rihanna.
Drama | 12’ | Spanish
INTERNATIONAL TITLE: The Infantas
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Almudena
SOUND DESIGN: Josefina Rozenwasser
DIRECTED BY Andrea Herrera
Monzú
SOUND: Nora Haddad
Catalá
SCREENPLAY: Andrea Herrera Catalá,
ART DIRECTOR: Julia Yolanda
PRODUCED BY Amor y Lujo S.L.
Almudena Monzú
MAIN CAST: Rihanna Martínez Tapia,
PRODUCER: Almudena Monzú,
DOP: Agnès Piqué
Ruth Esther Tapia, Natalia Germosén
Andrea Herrera Catalá
FILM EDITING: Aleix Rodón
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”I have always been considered a butch. I remember with sorrow the day when my grandma, excited with her first granddaughter, forced me to dress-up like a prima ballerina for Carnival. The Infantas stems from this memory. A mother, a daughter and the first round of a long fight about the daughter’s identity. What people will say depends on how Rihanna steps out of the door on Carnival day. The Infantas also portrays my feelings when, after moving to Barcelona and being dazzled by Europe, I re-encountered my Caribbean roots in the sound of Latin hair salons and in the green plantains sold in the grocery stores of Poble Sec. This short is about belonging, about (self) representation, and about love, which can be harmful too”. ANDREA HERRERA CATALÁ
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Andrea Herrera CatalĂĄ Born into a family of producers, Andrea started her field training on a film set at the age of 15. She studied filmmaking in Chile, and later she opened her first production company in Caracas. Her first feature, Nena, Say Hi to Diego, became a blockbuster in her country with a 15-week run in cinemas. In
2014 Andrea settled in Spain. In 2016, she founded Amor & Lujo with the producer and screenwriter Almudena MonzĂş; together they work on both fiction and documentary projects. Andrea is among the alumni of Berlinale Talents, Rotterdam Lab and EAVE Puentes.
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Red Gold is an animated short film documentary. Three women help us see the bigger picture behind a seasonal workers’ protest: abuse because of local policy, racial capitalism, and north to south global extractivism based on local alliances and migration policies. Their voices guide us to the heart of a bigger conflict, nudging us to reflect on its complexity.
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Oro Rojo Animation Documentary | 12’ | Spanish, Arabic
INTERNATIONAL TITLE: Red Gold
DOP: Carme Gomila and Marielle Paon
DIRECTED BY Carme Gomila
FILM EDITING: Carme Gomila
PRODUCED BY Novena Nube -
MUSIC: Aurora Bauzà
Laudiovisual prod.
SOUND DESIGN: Aurora Bauzà
SALES AGENT: Marving&Wayne
SOUND: Aurora Bauzà and
PRODUCER: Patricia Sánchez Mora
Alejandro Castillo
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Patricia
ART DIRECTOR: Carme Gomila, Alba
Sánchez Mora and Carme Gomila
Feito and Odile Carabantes
SCREENPLAY: Salma Amzian, Carme
VOICES: Laura Guiteras, Maryam Bous-
Gomila and Laia Manresa
settaoui Bakhat and Fátima Chahbar
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“Red Gold is not a short film about seasonal strawberry pickers in Huelva. It does not focus on the exposure of women and the multiple forms of violence they suffer, but on the rest of the agents responsible for the existing social, racial and economic order, including me, including you. Red Gold has to do with how we look at and explain what happens in our environment, and what causes this. This conviction arises from the dialogue between Laura, Maryam and Fatima, who are the Red Gold team, our neighbours, the activists of the Global South. Red Gold thus reflects the radical lessons we have learnt from this process of creation.� CARME GOMILA
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Carme Gomila Carme Gomila (Maรณ - Menorca, 1987) is a filmmaker who specialises in documentary creation with a feminist perspective and the hybridisation of documentary and animation. In recent years she has co-directed the animated documentary short films Blessy (2018), made by four women survivors of trafficking in collaboration
with three filmmakers, and Organizing the (im)possible (2017), made with Las Kellys Barcelona, the Spanish association of hotel chambermaids, and winner of numerous awards like Best Short in the London Feminist Film Festival and Biznaga de Plata - Affirming the Rights of Women, at the Malaga Film Festival.
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Tara and the Blue Drama | 19’ | Catalan, Spanish
Tara is 20 years old and lives in a Mediterranean town. A life that drags between hard work on a fishing boat, boredom and partying. It is an existence without prospects, trapped in economic and social stagnation. Tara seems to adjust to this life, but something is boiling inside her. She is unconsciously looking for a way out. When she unexpectedly finds an opportunity to escape, Tara is faced with a challenging decision that will catapult her life into an unstable future. 30 | Shortcat 2021
DIRECTED BY Pol Ponsarnau PRODUCED BY ZLA Films Turkana Films PRODUCER: Linda Dedkova EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Linda Dedkova, Maria Rosa Fusté, Alfons Par SCREENPLAY: Regina Dietl DOP: Phillip Kaminiak FILM EDITING: Pol Ponsarnau MUSIC: Eric C. Nogales (aka Skinnie Trill), MarkL, Anthxxx SOUND DESIGN: Roger Navarro SOUND: Roger Navarro, Carlos Rufete, Fernando Novillo ART DIRECTOR: Miren Oller MAIN CAST: Katrin Vankova, Karim Ait M’hand, Uri Llobet, Miriel Cejas, Pol Fernández, Júlio Vélez, Víctor Benjumea, Quimet Pla, Ángela Palacios
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“Tara is a clear example of someone who forges their own path towards a successful future, regardless of her friends and family. She embodies lack of opportunities and the consequent disruptive ambition, fuelled by the relentless consumerism of neoliberal society. With Tara and the Blue we intend to make the audience question the idea that ambition is the only way to escape the lack of commitment in our society�. POL PONSARNAU
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Pol Ponsarnau Pol Ponsarnau is a Catalan director, living and working between Barcelona and Berlin since 2010. He graduated in Audiovisual Communication at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, was an Erasmus scholar at FAMU (Film and TV School of Performing Arts) in Prague, and has a master’s degree in Humanities from the UOC. He has directed music videos for Sony and Warner, commercials and documentaries, and was co-director of the
documentary B-Side, screened at international festivals such as International Film Festival Rotterdam. Since 2016 Pol has been working on fictional projects. His award-winning first short film: Food, First (2016), a comedy drama about love relationships in a Berlin hipster restaurant, premiered internationally at the 28th Filmfest Dresden and has competed at more than 80 festivals nationally and internationally.
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Forastera Drama | 20’ | Catalan, Spanish
Antonia and her sister spend the summer holidays at their grandfather’s home. Once there, Antonia begins to feel an overwhelming wave of nostalgia. She cannot resist snooping through her late grandmother’s things, and finds a beautiful vintage dress that is calling her name. The garment fits Antonia like a glove, but her grandfather catches her playing dress-up. From this moment on, it becomes unclear who is inhabiting who.
INTERNATIONAL TITLE: Foreigner
SCREENPLAY: Lucía Aleñar Iglesias
DIRECTED BY Lucía Aleñar Iglesias
DOP: Alana Mejía González
PRODUCED BY Distinto Films -
FILM EDITING: Ana Pfaff
La Perifèrica Produccions
SOUND DESIGN: Nora Haddad
SALES AGENT: Marvin&Wayne
SOUND: Nora Haddad
PRODUCER: Miriam Porté, Marta Cruañas Compés
ART DIRECTOR: Laura Santos
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Marta Cruañas Compés
MAIN CAST: Zoe Stein, Miquel Gelabert Shortcat 2021 | 35
“The word forasters (outsiders) is used on the island of Mallorca in reference to Spaniards from the peninsula who visit the island. With this short film I wanted to explore a more fluid idea of what it can mean to be an outsider. For many, feeling out of place during adolescence gives way to moments of self-discovery. Antonia feels like an outsider to her generation and alien to her young body. With subtle magical realism, Antonia finds a clue to who she is through her grandmother, but the dive becomes deep enough that it proves difficult to distinguish herself from the familiar. The concept of transplanted identities is the beating heart of this project, and it explores the limits of generational and genetic inheritance”. LUCÍA ALEÑAR IGLESIAS
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Lucía Aleñar Iglesias Lucía Aleñar Iglesias (Madrid, 1993) is a screenwriter and director living between Madrid and Los Angeles. She earned her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is now completing her MFA in Screenwriting at Columbia University. Lucia has worked as line producer for documentary directors such as Peggy Stern or Tine Di Feliciantonio and Jane Wagner. She’s also
assisted the casting director Jennifer Vendetti in the casting of films such as Good Time of the Safdie Brothers. Her last short film, Foreigner, received funding from the Creative Europe Media programme and was selected by the 2020 Semaine de la Critique of the Cannes Film Festival, Curtas de Portugal and Gijón, among others.
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