Best movies like Érase un vez Juan Marsé

Mr. Vila is a family father who has worked a lot during his life to achieve a good life for his family. His oldest daughter, Elvira, causes him many problems because she acts as a rebel.

Based on a true story. In the 70s, during the last stages of Franco's dictatorship, Txema, a basque construction worker, is arrested because of his connection to some terrorists who have just committed a murder. The secret service see in him an ideal candidate to infiltrate the terrorist band ETA and become a mole, so they try to offer him a deal if he will do so.

Barcelona, in the forties. Young Andrea comes to town to start college in the midst of an oppressive environment and extreme poverty. She's staying at her aunt Angustias, along with other family members. But the quarrels between them are continuous, making evident the open wounds left by the Spanish civil war.

Portabella’s first feature, co-scripted by poet Joan Brossa, became one of the most influential works of the Barcelona avant-garde, although like all his early films, it circulated only in an underground fashion. Eschewing dialogue, the director constructs a non-narrative story in fragments that reveal the daily lives of an adulterous couple interspersed with a cryptic stream of unrelated imagery. The title of this homage to directors including Eisenstein, Antonioni, Bergman, and Buñuel refers to the 29 “black years” of the Franco dictatorship. — chicago.cervantes.es

A sincere portrait, and in first person, of the multifaceted Andalusian artist José Pérez Ocaña.

A young writer, nearing a mental breakdown caused by his family and boss, moves into an apartment occupied by a walking, talking, foul-mouthed ape in a Hawaiian shirt and Converse High Tops.

A strait-laced French student moves into an apartment in Barcelona with a cast of six other characters from all over Europe. Together, they speak the international language of love and friendship.

The Spanish explorer Pizarro captures the Inca god-chief Atahualpa and promises to free him upon the delivery of a hoard of gold. But Pizarro finds himself torn between his desire for conquest and his sense of honor after friendship and respect develops between captive and captor.

Painter Francisco Goya becomes involved with the Spanish Inquisition after his muse, Inés, is arrested by the church for heresy. Her family turns to him, hoping that his connection with fanatical Inquisitor Lorenzo, whom he is painting, can secure her release.

A historical drama that illustrates Russian author Leo Tolstoy's struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things. The Countess Sofya, wife and muse to Leo Tolstoy, uses every trick of seduction on her husband's loyal disciple, whom she believes was the person responsible for Tolstoy signing a new will that leaves his work and property to the Russian people.

Perros Callejeros is based on the juvenile delinquency of the 1970s and 80s in Spain. The story is set in Barrio de la Mina in Barcelona one of the most conflict neighbourhoods in Spain. The characters chosen were real juvenile delinquents all with criminal records, which the director used to give the film a realistic touch. This film is very powerful and dramatic, it shows how these kids were brought up to survive on the streets.

A veteran policeman named Fernando feels a lot of hatred against Ángel because the boy ran him over with a car leaving him lame. Now Fernando accuses the young crook of having participated in a robbery at a gas station in which a murder has occurred. Helped by his friends, Ángel rebuilds the facts that serve him as an alibi, but while he is in pre-trial detention in La Modelo prison (Barcelona) a terrible mutiny will take place.

The story of Aung San Suu Kyi as she becomes the core of Burma's democracy movement, and her relationship with her husband, writer Michael Aris.

David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.

In the autumn of 1970, Juan, a Spanish poet living in Paris working for UNESCO, returns on vacation to his hometown, Burgos. The city is under heavy police and military surveillance due to the so-called Burgos process, a summary military trial against a group of ETA members and other militants against Francisco Franco’s regime.

Mario Gas directed this music-themed Spanish drama set in Barcelona of the mid-'80s. When famed composer Lluis Doria (Laurent Terzieff) visits a transvestite club, he learns his lifelong friend Albert Rossell (Serge Reggiani) is the house pianist. A flashback takes the tale four decades into the past where the younger Rossell (Pere Ponce) rejoins Teresa (Paulina Galvez) after having spent years in prison for helping anti-Franco anarchists. The story continues into Paris of the '30s, the period when Doria and Rossell first met, sharing a mutual interest in music and Teresa, before civil war sent them in different directions.

Salamanca, Spain, 1936. In the early days of the military rebellion that began the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), writer Miguel de Unamuno supports the uprising in the hope that the prevailing political chaos will end. But when the confrontation becomes bloody, Unamuno must question his initial position.

After refusing big and prestigious awards all over the world, Mr. Mantovani, Literature Nobel Prize winner, accepts an invitation to visit his hometown in Argentina, which has been the inspiration for all of his books. It turns out that accepting this invitation is the worse idea of his life. Expect the unexpected when you have used real people as characters in your novels!

Sara has been alone all her life. She’s 22, has a baby, and wants to form a normal family with her young brother and the father of her child. Her own father, Manuel, decides to come back into their lives after years of absence and his release from prison. Sara knows he’s the main obstacle to her plans and she makes a difficult decision: to distance him from herself and her brother.

A portrait of the life and career of Robert Downey Sr. (1936-2021), the visionary and fearless US filmmaker — father of actor Robert Downey Jr. — who in the sixties and seventies laid the foundations for countercultural comedy.

In the lush tradition of the glorious films of Merchant and Ivory, comes the true life story of Leonie Gilmour (Emily Mortimer), whose life crossed continents, wars and cultures, embodied with courage and passion in search of art and freedom. A tender and inspiring story of a remarkable woman who nurtures the amazing artistic talent of her son who has only one way to succeed and one person to guide him, as he grows into the world renown artist, Isamu Noguchi.

Somewhere in the spanish country, in the 60s. Paco and his wife Régula are very poor. They work as tenant farmers for a very wealthy landowner. They have 3 children. One is backward. The others can not got to school because the master "needs" their work. When Regula's brother is fired from where he has worked for 61 years, he settles down at their little place... An attack against the archaism of the spanish country of the 60s.

When Juan Catalan is arrested for a murder he insists he didn't commit, he builds his case for innocence around unexpected raw footage.

Northern Spain, October 1944. Several groups of guerrilla fighters, former Republican soldiers exiled in France after the end of the Spanish Civil War, infiltrate the country in order to provoke a popular uprising against General Franco's dictatorship.

The very first Spanish full feature-length film is based on musical composed by Enric Morera on a libretto by Francesc Pujols i Morgades, based on a work by Víctor Balaguer premiered on October 7, 1922 at the Tívoli Theater in Barcelona. The action takes place around the Catalan gang in the seventeenth century; it is a story of impossible love between "nyerros" and "cadells" that culminates with the execution of the titled protagonist.

In early 20th-century Naples, a theatrical parody lands beloved thespian and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta in court, facing a malicious lawsuit that could compromise his freedom of expression and the economic security of his extended family—including his son's, young Eduardo De Filippo.

A poignant biography of one of the most successful and wildly-read writers of the 20th century. Her stories enthralled children everywhere but her personal struggles often proved too much.

Fascinating journey through the life and work of the prestigious Catalan poet Jaime Gil de Biedma, both marked by sexuality and eroticism. Charismatic and somewhat eccentric, brilliant intellectual with extraordinary sensitivity and member of Barcelona's 'gauche divine' in the 60s, Gil de Biedma liked to describe himself as a 'poet of experience' while he suffered dreadfully from the dichotomy strangling him: bourgeois and executive for a multinational by day, communist and homosexual poet by night.

Docudrama about American poet Hart Crane, who committed suicide in April 1932 at the age of 32 by jumping off the steamship SS Orizaba.

Prades, France, 1940s. The exiled Catalan cellist Pau Casals decides not to perform any more in public until the fall of the dictatorship that oppresses Spain. Pierre, a young Frenchman studying with Casals, tries to convince him to celebrate an extraordinary concert as a tribute to freedom.

Mockumentary about the confrontation between Miguel de Cervantes and Lope de Vega around the apocryphal second part of the Quijote signed by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. It also tells the relations of other writers and influent persons on the Spanish Golden Age.

Spain, June 2014. King Juan Carlos I abdicates after forty years on the throne. The historical cycle that began in 1978 has ended. It is the beginning of a new era. Felipe VI is the new king and the future is uncertain.

A young woman, who has inherited her grandparents' huge house, a fascinating place full of amazing objects, feels overwhelmed by the weight of memories and her new responsibilities. Fortunately, the former inhabitants of the house soon come to her aid. (An account of the life and work of Fernando Fernán Gómez [1921-2007] and his wife Emma Cohen [1946-2016], two singular artists and fundamental figures of contemporary Spanish culture.)

The poet and playwright Lope de Vega is already a priest officially. The love affairs of the Spanish writer and actress Lucía Salcedo, whom he nicknamed as "La loca", are publicly known. Cervantes dies. Lope falls madly in love with Marta de Nevares. She is an intelligent and delicate woman, interested in literature and music. The two attract and live a romantic story.

Writer and broadcaster Jonathan Meades turns his gaze onto Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

Narrated by Tina Sinatra, this TV compilation brings together memorable moments from Frank Sinatra’s career on television, in the studio and in concert through the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. Many of his best loved songs are featured including Fly Me To The Moon, Witchcraft, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, My Way, Strangers In The Night, That’s Life, The Lady Is A Tramp and many more.

From his office in Barcelona, where he usually works, Spanish writer Juan Marsé speaks of his novels, the movies that have been made from them, their relations with the classic American cinema and its influence on his narrative.

In the early Spanish Civil Post-war, in Madrid, during the most hard times of the Franco dictatorship, a group of second-rate players try to get out of their wretched lives taking advantage of the artistic caprices of the son of a rich man who supports the regime. They try to stage a Pre-war 'zarzuela' (a sort of Spanish operetta), 'La Corte Del Faraón', which ironically, thirty years later, is too obscene for the regime censorship. They finally manage to perform the 'zarzuela' but end up in the police station where they confirm that justice depends on which side are you on

Based on real events, in 1972 Juan and José are two textile workers from Tarrasa, Catalonia (northeast to Spain) who meet during an UFOs' convention. Both share their passion about the paranormal, specially about UFOs. In these years where was very much UFOs' sightings, they feel captivated by the mystery and start to investigate the diverse theories about the intentions or purposes of the sightings. Their friendship and the obsession they have will turn in dementia and paranoia, hurting their relations with their respective friends and familiars and exposing their lives to an extreme decision due to the conclusion of their own investigations. Written by Chockys

A journey through the fantastic and mysterious Barcelona that the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964-2020) loved so much, the city of myth and legend, the city that was before it became one of the main European tourist destinations.

Obsessively referring to the traumas and wounds that the Spanish civil war (1936-39) and Franco's dictatorship (1939-75) caused in their day no longer serves to explain the impassable abyss of incomprehension and hatred that the abject policies and radical positions adopted by both the right and the left in recent decades have opened up before the citizens of a country that is barely known beyond hackneyed cultural clichés.

As in the novel of the same title from Camilo Jose Cela, "La Colmena" is a sad composition with the stories of many people in the Madrid of 1942, just the postwar of the spanish civil war. The main theme of the film is the contrast between the poets, surviving close to misery under the Franco's regime, and the winners of the war, the emerging class of the people that makes easy money with illegal business.

A striking political activist and refugee from Paraguay escapes to Paris and falls in love with a rich law student changing their lives forever. The beauty of their love is challenged by a fervent devotion to fighting for a cause.

Spain, 1808. The Napoleonic Army suffers its first defeat at the hands of a single man: a drummer boy who used the Montserrat mountains to echo his drums and send the enemy troops into a panicked retreat. When the news reaches Napoleon, he furiously orders the captain of the Imperial Guard to bring back the head of the young hero responsible for his army's defeat…

A fourteen year old lad discovers his first love at the point of his pencil whilst drawing the portrait of a sickly but coquettish fifteen year old girl. In the neighbourhood an old freedom-fighter pits himself against bad types, a pretty cinema-ticket girl takes to the streets at night and a young anarchist dedicates himself to telling tall stories. Far away, in Shanghai, a hero of the Republic meets a beautiful femme fatal with oriental eyes. Reality and fiction become fused in an embrace.

Bilbao, Basque Country, 2001: a ruthless terrorist attack shatters the family of police officer Carlos Martínez. Barcelona, 2013: Carlos leaves Mariusz, a Polish immigrant, in charge of his daughter and, offering vague excuses, returns to the Basque Country and rents a house in Lekeitio, a small village by the sea.

"Caracremada" ("Burnface" in Catalan), a nickname given by the Spanish Civil Guard to Ramon Vila Capdevila, reflects about the libertarian resistance against Franco's regime through the last active guerrilla fighter. In 1951 the CNT ordered the retreat of its militants; however Ramon Vila remained in the woods of inland Catalonia where he restarted the fight operating on his own.

When Ana married Felix, the leader of a rock band and son of a travel agent, she thought her life would be plenty of excitement and travels. Now, in her forties, she leads a monotonous life with her husband and her daughter, giving cooking lessons and taking French courses. But one day she receives an invitation to give a cooking course in Paris.

Juan's life gives an unexpected twist when the laboratory for which he works announces his dismissal. Faced with the difficult economic situation of the country migrates from Montevideo to Barcelona. There he meets Mariano, an Argentine friend of the fanfare that dreams with Hollywood while cleaning tables and Julia, a young student who works as a waitress. Thanks to them, he manages to get integrated in the city and to see nearer the dream of bringing together his family. But Juan will soon discover that what he wants is, closer to him than he could ever have imagined.

Paco and Lisa flee to Barcelona in a stolen car with the intention of building a future in show business. After unsuccessfully looking for work, the two youngsters will be immersed in crime and prostitution.