Looking for some great Spanish films to watch? Here are My Five Romances’ favourites so far at the 2025 Spanish Film Festival in Australia, in a rough order of preference. But that doesn’t mean the ones at the bottom of the list lack merit – all 33 films in the festival were chosen from a much longer list. These are lo mejor do lo mejor (the best of the best or the cream of the crop in English, or as the French would say, la crème de la crème) of recent Spanish and Latino filmmaking.
Las Tres Sisters / The Three Sisters
Three Mexican-American but mostly American sisters – pictured from left at top – Lucía (Valeria Maldonado), María (Marta Méndez Cross) and my favourite, Sofía (Virginia Novello) reunite at María’s insistence, returning to Mexico to do a six-day rural camino to Talpa de Allende. The camino is partly to honour their Mexican grandmother, who did the walk regularly, but also because María needs a medical miracle of her own. Out of their depth physically and sometimes linguistically (to humorous effect), they are vulnerable to conmen along the way, but luckily handsome, buffed local Kin (Cristo Fernández) takes them under his wing. Las Tres Sisters is a wonderful mix of humour, poignancy, zest and pathos, and the scenery is stunning. I really want to do this camino!
El secreto del orfebre / The Goldsmith’s Secret
An enthralling love story set in 1976, with a flashback to 1953 and a fast forward to 1999, but the time changes come with intriguing twists that command attention. Mario Casas plays the handsome goldsmith, Enzo Oliver plays his younger self, whose first calling, surprisingly, is to be a writer/journalist. Michelle Jenner and Zoe Bonafonte (who also stars in El 47, below) play the female leads.
This sumptuous film, which was chosen to be the Date Night event of the HSBC 2025 Spanish Film Festival, makes you ponder the power of destiny and all that it encompasses: missed opportunities, lifelong regrets on one hand, and on the other decisive moments when you make something truly meaningful happen.
Feliciano and his favourite alpaca, Ronaldo.
Raíz / Through Rocks And Clouds
Boasting the scenic splendour to match a big-budget nature documentary, this Peruvian film shot in the Quispicanchi region of Cusco looks at the world through the eyes of eight-year-old Feliciano (played Alberth Merma) and his companions Ronaldo, an alpaca, and his dog, Rambo. Football-loving Feliciano’s main task when he is not in school is to look after a herd of alpacas, whose wool is a valuable asset for the local community. Alpacas are very cute! In this film they move and flow and weave together like a troupe of Ballerinas.
The Rocks, of course, are the cloud-wrapped Andes mountains, but they also contain valuable minerals and tension is building between the Quechua-speaking local community and an intrusive mining company that is polluting their lands. The Spanish title Raíz means “root” as in the underground part of a plant that needs water and nutrients. Every now and then in the film we see a blackened puddle bubbling ominously, and the god of the mountain, Auki Tayta, is getting angry.
Gila (at front) on patrol with his fellow soldiers.
Es el enemigo? La película de Gila / May I Speak With The Enemy?
The Spanish Civil War has spawned many fine cinematic dramas, but this is the first that reminded me of the classic British comedy TV series, Dad’s Army, which was a huge hit in my youth. At first it seems like Es el enemigo is going down the same slapstick path, following the fortunes of a makeshift unit of conscripts who are hopelessly unsuited to fighting a war. Except one, the only woman in the unit, Rosa, played with great gusto and relish by Natalia de Molina.
But war is never a humorous business, and as the film takes a darker turn, the lead character Miguel Gila (Oscar Lasarte), an aspiring cartoonist, tries to keep the unit’s spirits up with his humour. The tragi-comedy fluctuations make more sense when we learn at the end of the film that the real life Gila became a popular stand-up comedian and actor, and he holds the record for the longest-running one-man show in the world. He died in 2001.
The two main characters break the ice in a cafe after a chance encounter at a nearby cinema.
Lo que quisimos ser / What we wanted to be
I saw this Argentinian film earlier in the year on a long-distance flight on Qatar Airways, which has a good selection of films in the romance languages, even Romanian sometimes. It was at the point of the journey when I really should have switched off my screen and gone to sleep, but I got more and more absorbed in this film as it went on. It’s a wonderful film about the power of storytelling, and taking a break from reality to enunciate your dreams, even if you never got the chance to realise them.
It starts with two strangers (played by Luis Rubio and Eleonora Wexler) who meet as they come out of cinema, go for a drink and eventually fall in love. (Get thee to a festival cinema, the same could happen to you!) Or, more accurately, because they are purposely role-playing, they have to grapple with “the illusion of love”, as the festival program puts it. They meet weekly in a gorgeous restaurant in Buenos Aires called The Brighton (not the one pictured above) and the culinary scene in the Argentinian capital looks amazing!
The residents of the Torre Baró district take a stand.
El 47 / The 47
The story behind the unusual hijacking of a Number 47 in Barcelona in 1978 – unusual in that it happened in the nicest possible way – no guns, no violence, just one man’s gritty determination. It’s also the story of the Torre Baró, a neighbourhood of shanties and shacks on the hilly outskirts of the the city, built in the 1960s by people leaving the regions of Extremadura and Andalusia to seek a better life. But they get little support from the city council and bus driver Manolo’s (Eduard Fernández) frustrations eventually reach breaking point…
El 47 was a box-office hit in Spain and won in five categories at the 2025 Goya Awards: Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Special Effects, Best Production Design but most notably Best Film, which it shared with Undercover, which is also screening at the 2025 Spanish Film Festival. The story takes an interesting twist when the hopes and ambitions of the younger generation at Torre Baró come into play. There’s an incredibly moving sequence of scenes focused on Manolo’s daughter’s audition and performance in an all-female choir. Young actress Zoe Bonafonte (who also appears in The Goldsmith’s Secret) sure can sing! M5R
All photos courtesy of the Spanish Film Festival
