The Tarragona International Film Festival celebrates its XXIII edition this year from November 22 to 26, with a dozen productions that showcase the best emerging international talent through the official Opera Prima competition section. This year there are ten films in competition, most of which are premiering in Catalonia and Spain.
In the 2023 edition, the REC concentrates five days of intense cinematographic activity and the discovery of new talents from all over the world in Tarragona, with the Metropol Theatre, the Tarragona Theater and the Serrallo Theater as the central spaces of a a meeting with culture that, as in previous editions, will bring to the city the best international first operas, emerging cinema and special screenings that invite us to dream.
The REC International Film Festival of Tarragona counts for one more year and since its inception the institutional commitment of Tarragona City Council. The Minister of Culture, Sandra Ramos, and the artistic director of the festival, Javier García Puerto; they gave the details of this new edition this morning in a press conference.
Sandra Ramos has expressed “the satisfaction on the part of the City Council to have a new edition of the REC, a Festival that is part of the philosophy of the council to bet firmly and give an impetus to quality cinema”.
For his part, Javier García Puerto reviewed “the more than twenty years of the REC’s trajectory focused on new creation, both national and international bringing the Tarragona audience closer to proposals far from the most commercial”. Of this 23rd edition, the artistic director of the Festival has explained “how the cinematographic works presented by the REC bring us closer to all corners of the world. Today’s films speak of the cinema of the future”.
Opera Prima International Section: Films in competition
The REC Festival presents an international program full of new talent, novelties and premieres that will seduce the public with great titles. This year’s proposals offer a fresh take on the new voices of international cinema and include first films by creators who will be eligible for the awards of the International Jury, Cineclubs, Jurat Jove and the Audience Award, which will be announced on the november 26th.
With themes that trace the map of affections and relationships around the planet, the programming of the Opera Prima section of the REC 2023 Festival bets on unpublished feature films premiering from around the world that make up a complete sample of emerging talent, which looks and reflects on the world around us with a unique perspective.
The competition program includes films from cinematographies as diverse as Sudan, Lithuania or Taiwan, which have won the admiration of audiences at major festivals such as Sundance, Cannes and Venice.
In this sense, viewers will be able to enjoy films such as HEROICO, a fast-paced proposal that comes from Mexico and which tells us about the hierarchical – and humiliating – systems of military schools and GOODBYE JULIA, a film with female portraits framed in the reality of Sudan by to talk to us about great topics that have no end or era; guilt, revelations, injustice, the weight of patriarchy and the origin of conflicts.
Within the framework of the Opera Prima section, THE SWEET EAST is also presented, one of the sensations of the Fortnight of Cannes Filmmakers, which will surely be a cult indie film, and which proposes a physical and emotional journey through of the United States through the eyes of a sixteen-year-old girl. The film could be defined as Alice in Wonderland trash and will, for sure, be the cult film of this year.
From Lithuania comes one of the REC 2023 proposals that will not leave anyone indifferent, such as SLOW, which deals with sensitivity and sensitivity, a couple’s bond that crosses all limits. Precisely, personal relationships taken to the limit are also the helm of LOVE IS A GUN, a gangster film that comes from Taiwan with an intoxicating aesthetic and a deliberately cool proposal that won the Best Opera Prima Award in Venice.
Aimless lives – and the way to find it when everything seems lost – are the guiding thread of LE RAVISSEMENT, a proposal that comes from France with the intention of dislocating the audience and making them rethink many things. The feature film AMA GLORIA also comes from the Gallic country, which shows us a beautiful relationship of affection between a little girl and her nanny and which brings light and warmth to the cold late autumn evenings.
Other experiences proposed by the Opera Prima competition section of the REC 2023 Festival is the Estonian film THE LIMITS OF CONSENT, an interactive film that has nine different possible endings and that opens up the possibility for viewers to “decide” the future of Anna, a protagonist expert in the art of manipulation, who will at the same time be “manipulated” by the audience.
HOW TO HAVE SEX arrives from the United Kingdom after being crowned with the distinctions of Best Film at the Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard) and Best Novel Direction at the Seminci de Valladolid and will be one of the most talked about REC 2023, as it has bright images and a perfect soundtrack to accompany us on the journey, sometimes painful, towards maturity and the first sexual experiences. This is the film that will steal the hearts of those who, last year, were excited by After sun, one of the successes of the REC 2022 Festival.
Finally, THE (EX)PERIENCE OF LOVE brings us, from France and Belgium, the effects of the “Past Love Syndrome” and its effects on a couple. A comedy, with love in the background, which will help us close this year’s selection with a complicit smile.
Opera Prima 2023 screenings:
– HEROICO – Novembre 23 / 4pm – Teatre Metropol / Premiere in Catalonia
– GOODBYE JULIA – November 23 / 6pm – Teatre Metropol.
– THE SWEET EAST – November 23, 8.30pm – Teatre Tarragona / Premiere in Catalonia
– SLOW – November 23 / 10.30pm – Teatre Metropol.
– LOVE IS A GUN – November 24 / 4pm – Teatre Metropol / Premiere in Spain
– LE RAVISSEMENT – November 24 / 8pm – Teatre Metropol / Premiere in Spain
– AMA GLORIA – November 25th, 6pm – Teatre Tarragona / Premiere in Catalonia
– THE LIMITS OF CONSENT – November 25th / 8pm – Teatre Tarragona / Premiere in Spain.
– HOW TO HAVE SEX – November 25th / 10.15pm – Teatre Tarragona / Premiere in Catalonia.
– THE (EX)PERIENCE OF LOVE – November 26th / 6pm – Teatre Metropol / Premiere in Spain.
You can now purchase tickets for the screenings!
