Spanish Film Festival returns March 24-30

March 17, 2025 — DENTON — The 2025 TWU Spanish Film Festival will feature five movies from five countries, including two films which were official entries to the Academy Awards.

The festival will take place March 24-30. The film Ixcanul will be screened in ACT 302 on March 25 at 4 p.m. Attendance is free. The other four films will be available online.

This year's lineup:

Alegria

Violeta Salama (Spain, 2021) 119 min.
A story of reconciliation told by a Jewish woman, a Muslim and a Christian living in Morocco. It is shaped entirely by women – from the director and screenwriters to the producer. A layered, heartfelt family drama about women breaking free from patriarchal tradition in a contemporary Jewish diasporic community.

3 Beauties

Carlos Caridad Montero (Venezuela, 2014) 97 min.
From the country that boasts over 600 beauty pageants each year comes 3 Beauties, a scathing satire of Venezuela’s fixation with beauty and its relation to social status. Perla is the single mother of two competitive daughters, products of her own unfulfilled childhood obsession to become a beauty queen, and a son who she completely ignores. As the years pass, Perla’s unlimited efforts to achieve her dream through her two princesses transforms everyone’s lives into a nightmare. Toddlers & Tiaras meets Pedro Almodóvar in this frantic, devious comedy.

A Moonless Night

Germán Tejeira (Argentina, Uruguay, 2015) 81 min.
Uruguay’s official entry to the Academy Awards for best foreign language film from director Germán Tejeira. On New Year’s Eve, three lonely characters travel to a small town in the Uruguayan countryside. Cesar, a divorced man, arrives at the town, where he will have dinner with his ex-wife’s new family in an attempt to win back his daughter’s love. Antonio, a small-time magician, is trying to get to the town to perform his routine at the community center, but his car breaks down. Stranded in the middle of the deserted road, he meets Laura, a woman working at the toll station. Miguel, a performer, prepares to sing at the community center’s New Year’s Eve party. By following their paths to the town, the characters have a chance to change their destinies.

Ixcanul

Jayro Bustamante (France, Guatemala, 2015) 62 min.
The debut of Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante is a mesmerizing fusion of fact and fable, a dreamlike depiction of the daily lives of Kaqchikel speaking Mayans on a coffee plantation at the base of an active volcano. Immersing us in its characters’ customs and beliefs, Ixcanul chronicles with unblinking realism, a disappearing tradition and a disappearing people.

Babygirl

Laura Amelia Guzmán (Dominican Republic, 2023) 92 min.
From the New Wave of Dominican cinema, it inverts the ‘maid-as-a-second-mother’ narrative to explore issues of class and race. Set in an upper-class neighborhood of the Dominican Republic, Babygirl is an unsettling portrait of a middle-aged woman and her relations with family, servants and entourage.

Click here for more details and how to stream the movies.