The ninth edition of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival begins on Sat 1 Oct for a month-long celebration of the best new and classic cinema from Spain. As well as various venues across Edinburgh, the best of the programme will also screen at the Glasgow Film Theatre, Belmont, Aberdeen, and the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling.

Our film editor Kevin Ibbotson-Wight takes a look at some potential highlights:

Two new films featuring the great Luis Tosar (Even the Rain, Cell 211, Sleep Tight) bookend the festival. The opening screening is Maixabel from long-term festival favourite Icíar Bollaín. In this real-life tale Tosar plays a member of the Basque separatist group Eta, involved in the assassination of socialist politician Juan María Jáuregui. Blanca Portillo won a Goya Award as Maixabel Lasa, Jáuregui’s widow, who agrees to the terrorist’s request for an interview in a search for justice and reconciliation.

Tosar switches tones abruptly in the comedy Monkey Business which closes the festival. In Daniel Guzmán‘s film three friends reunite after 20 years. Two remain unemployed, but one claims to have become an important businessman. When he gets notification that his mother’s home is to be repossessed, his two pals come up with a serious of ideas to find the money to stop the eviction. Ideas that only dump their friend into further misery.

Elsewhere, Julieta‘s Emma Suárez stars in Josefina, the directorial debut of Javier Marco. Suárez plays the mother of a prison inmate to whom guard Roberto Álamo takes a shine.

The festival shines a specific light on the region of Catalonia in Carla Simón‘s pastoral drama Alcarràs, and Nely Reguera‘s story of a retired doctor assisting at a refugee camp, The Volunteer. It also shifts continents entirely to focus on Latin America. In Song Without a Name, Melina León depicts 1980s Lima, Peru in moody black-and-white in a bizarre tale of a missing baby. And in Micaela Gonzalo‘s The New Girl, a young Argentinian woman goes for broke and moves to Tierra del Fuego in the hope of economic stability in the island’s manufacturing industry.

Besides the new films, the latest edition of the festival pays tribute to the late writer and director Bigas Luna in a trio of outre comedies from the early 1990s that exemplify his career. These are Golden Balls from 1993, 1994’s The Tit and the Moon, and perhaps his best known work, Jamón Jamón from 1992, which sees Spanish icons Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz together for the first time.

Ahead of the festival, Marian A. Aréchaga, director of Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival said:
“The last couple of years have been challenging for the film and cultural industry. We are delighted to be back at the cinemas and make our festival a place to share experiences together. The festival shines a light on the best in Spanish cinema and TV and we are thrilled to feature bold and exciting works from a broad spectrum of talent. The festival team is extremely grateful to the institutions that have helped us to create a platform where Spanish and British industry professionals can meet.”

Edinburgh International Spanish Film Festival runs from Sat 1 Oct – Fri Nov 4. A full list of screenings and tickets can be found at edinburghspanishfilmfestival.com/en/