Parallel 40 - Parallel 40

Two journalists investigate a mysterious community of dwarves who lived marginalised in the Pyrenees up to 100 years ago. They were victims of poverty and the social prejudices of the age but they suddenly disappeared when spa tourism in the region began to expand. Their ...
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This work embarks from an unknown story. Four hundred years after the expulsion of the Catalan and Aragonese Moors converted to Christianity, a group of people from the Ebro region recreated the tragic journey taken by the exiles. From Lleida to the Bahía de los ...
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This documentary shows a personal point of view about the author’s maternity. She wonders about her life, her vital changes, and her relationship with her environment, as well as life’s values, and the human capacity to love and also to ...
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The cinema "Alhambra" in La Garriga is one of the few traditional cinemas that still exist in Catalonia. The author of the documentary Alhambra (my cinema) invites us to enter in an intimate and personal way this space that so fascinates them, and to spy all the corners ...
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Alquimistas is a theatre group formed almost exclusively by mentally disabled people. In 2002 the company began a new project: to become the characters of the short film in 35 mm 2+2=5. Three years later the short film was selected to participate in the San Sebastian Film ...
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It's been 10 years since Josep was diagnosed as having schizophrenia. Now he has learned to coexist with this disease and his new life.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder with lots of social clichés that cause a distorted image of its reality. This documentary ...
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Leo has a bar in the heart of the Barceloneta district of Barcelona. She is the first to open in the morning and the last to close at night. She doesn't close on Sundays or take holidays. Where does this small woman aged over sixty get the strength from to keep up this pace? ...
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For any football-lover worthy of the name, the Barça – Madrid  Derby is a magical, unmissable game. For beyond this game there is an incredible tragi-comedy being played where feelings and emotions intermingle, true or fantasized, ...
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The daily life of an old people's home is being upset by an unexpected element: the elderly folk who live there have to move to another building. The documentary shows how these people express their contradictory feelings when they realise they can not decide where to live ...
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Every day at 8 pm, the Gòtic district of Barcelona changes radically. Door-to-door rubbish collection turns these crowded streets into a place where rubbish, furniture and other left objects pile up. But the truth is that it’s not the end of these objects’ ...
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Can Ricart is one of the industries affected by the new urban Plan 22@ in Barcelona. Despite strong opposition, this project, which aims to renew the industrial areas of this quarter, is planning to demolish almost all this complex. Still with no agreements signed by any of ...
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The author’s mother has overcome breast cancer, something that connected mother-and-daughter in an unexpected way. Through an interview the mother explains to her daughter how she felt in every part of the process. They have lived the experience together, but the author ...
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Alex is a unique young man who likes to build the world around him. He lives in a lorry that he has built, his main fixation is saving and he refuses to live in a flat because he would have to pay a mortgage or rent.
We will accompany him in his everyday life and see ...
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In this documentary, Lluís Permanyer, chronicler of Barcelona, brings to life the all-embracing urban adventure that propelled the city towards modernity and explains the Barcelona we know today. A brilliant and decisive page in its history which is, at the same time, ...
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Chio is a young Japanese pianist who currently lives in Barcelona. She is one of the numerous foreign artists who are passing through the city and have no idea how long they'll be staying. She says that she decided she wanted to live here for a time when she was young as she ...
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As a result of polio, Miguel has had mobility problems since childhood that force him to get about on crutches or in a wheelchair. Despite this, he has always led an active life and run his own company. In 2007, he realised that he was losing movement ability and that he ...
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40 years ago Andres and Preciosa emigrated to America and settled in Argentina. This summer they have had the opportunity to come back to Galicia during their holidays and to see how their old homes have changed, the past and the present of their towns, their families and ...
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Manolo is a man who was left blind 20 years ago, at the age of 30, due to a degenerative disease of the retina. Despite the initial blow this change caused, over the years he has managed to overcome the difficulties to the point of leading a life that is, in his words, fuller ...
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An eminent German writer who suffered from dwarfism set up home in the late 1980s in a mediaeval castle in a town in the Catalan hinterland. He was working on an ambitious project, but died three months later. Why did he die? What was he doing in the castle? The documentary ...
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Many cats are abandoned every day in appalling conditions. Newman is one of them. He has been abandoned in the street and wants to be given a second chance. Through the work of the "El Jardincito de los gatos" (The Cats' Nursery) association, we will see the process they must ...
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This history has its roots in 1954, the year when a teenage Lluís Permanyer first set foot in El Molino and was bowled over by the feel and life of a city so different from his Barcelona in the Eixample.

Since then, the journalist has been a privileged ...
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At the age of 16, Juan Antonio Pascual was told that he would never walk again. Polio left his body paralysed, but in turn gave birth in him to a passion for art that has never left him. Now, at 42, he has managed to make drawing his profession. Beside him, his twin brother ...
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Mojiganga dance at the Fiesta Mayor in Vilafranca. At the end of August, the town is getting ready for the San Félix festivities and the dance members are rehearsing hard. Through David, In an Instant looks at the events of the Fiesta Mayor and tries to discover what ...
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In the mid-1960s, Esplugues de Llobregat was invaded by a posse of cowboys and bandits. They were all drawn to a Western town called Esplugues City. This documentary tells the story of this American Western town and of a way of working that all who were involved agree in ...
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This documentary focuses on how torture can change the lives of those who suffered it. The characters, Ramon, Mireia and Jorge explain their present life situation, full of fear and traumas which are difficult to overcome, after being victims of torture a few years ...
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This documentary focuses on the flop films shot in Barcelona (Spain) in the seventies.
Meeting: Sunday, 15 May 1975, at 8’30 p.m., in the very centre of Catalonia square.
Conditions: Every contestant brings his/her own camera and one film (15 meters, 200 ...
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Sergi is 34 years old. At his age, he's going through a maturity crisis that is making him feel like he's caught "offside", the title of this documentary directed by Sergi Moreno. His youth is coming to an end and he feels that he has still not fully established his ...
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A journalist from Girona feels himself captivated by the story of Frédéric Bourdin, "The Chameleon", a 31 year old lying globe-trotter, who is obsessed by adopting the identity of missing children. Bourdin has a police record across Europe. He became known when ...
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The grandfather Jaume is 81 years old and two years ago he bought a little digital video camera. The fascination of the director's grandfather recording the reality around him with the little camera is extraordinary, and it has become his tool to explain and show his life to ...
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Ramon, Palmira, Agustín and Maria do not know each other but their lives have a lot in common. They have seen how the Civil War changed their young lives, even when they were not yet born. Their parents and one of their fiancés went to the war to fight with the ...
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The stars of this documentary are young musicians who grow every summer at the pace of their instruments and help each other in the creation of the La Guardia Pilosa youth orchestra. In Crescendo is the display of these young people's hard work as they devote many hours to ...
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In times of serious financial crisis and paralysis of the job market, the story of Matías and his friends, all of them unemployed, serves to offer different subjective perspectives of this historic time, normally treated in the media in a general, abstract and ...
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Julia has spent her entire life sewing clothes for the gypsies in Barcelona's Gracia district. She feels that at the age of 80 it's time she retired: Maritxi's bridal dress will be the last of her career.

Julia's Last Dress speaks of a tireless woman who loves her ...
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In Chile “Funa” means to denounce in public the murderers and those who committed tortures during Pinochet’s regime.  After Pinochet’s arrest in London, the Chileans realised that the dictatorship was not untouchable anymore. It was the beginning ...
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Michel's Suitcase is the personal investigation by film-maker Clara Farràs to find out who the owner of a suitcase was that some friends found in a squat in Barcelona. A suitcase containing a treasure: the memories and souvenirs of its owner.
Her fascination for ...
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Rosa is 70 years old and has a basket shop in the Clot district of Barcelona that belonged first to her grandfather and then to her father. She lives behind the shop in a very precarious situation. For 20 years, she has put up with the pressure of the owner of the property ...
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The top of the Rovira hill, in Barcelona's Carmel district, is one of these often forgotten places where history can be seen and touched if we will only look at the fine detail. A group of young people will learn of the place's connections with the Spanish Civil War and the ...
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La Makabra is an old factory, usually occupied by fifty squatters. It is open to the public, and it works as a self-managed cultural centre in the Poble Nou district, in Barcelona. This social and artistic collective is affected by the Plan 22@, responsible for restructuring ...
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Manel M, is a nice person: in his 60s he has the vitality of a twenty-year-old man. With a Nouvelle Vague spirit, he uses the camera as a fountain pen. As a film lover, he has collected images of demonstrations, squatters, evictions... as a historical archive of ...
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Six years ago, this documentary maker worked voluntarily for a few weeks as a "food delivery boy" for the Red Cross programme "Meals on Wheels". Now he wants to relive that experience, in order to meet the people he took food to again. During the documentary we follow four ...
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This documentary tells the personal and professional story of Sebastià Pons, one of the last lighthouse-keepers in the island of Menorca. His daughter, the documentary’s director, has been affected, along with her family, by the changes that this old profession ...
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The weekend is here and the dance hall La Paloma fills with old people who come to have a good time, dance and meet each other. They arrive punctually at 6.30 in the evening, behaving like teenagers: couples, groups of friends and lonely people share happy hours, a break from ...
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Margalef’s brother has an oxen farm, located in Amposta which is the oldest in Catalonia. It was founded at the end of the XIX century, and is still active today. After some years training, Paco, a 23 year old man, controls the business.
Oxen scenes in Delta de ...
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Ernest Sitges is the last migrating shepherd of Berguedà, a catalonian region. The day before Sant John’s day, he begins his foot-way. It takes three days to move his flock from Vallcebre to La Molina (Cerdanya), where ewes stay all summer long.
In the ...
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The poor state of buildings, lack of facilities and very few green spaces, added to the mass influx of a non-EU foreign population, with a low income, has transformed certain parts of Catalan cities into places in need of both urban and social improvement. To put a stop to ...
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Playground is an observational documentary about a square in the Carmel district of Barcelona and the people who spend time there. The camera keeps its distance and lets the characters act, respecting them. Many little stories happen from this observation of daily life, ...
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Rosa did not have an easy life. When she gets to her 70s, she decides to get divorced from her husband. She did not expect much else from her life, so she resigned herself to see how time passes. Unexpectedly, in the gymnasium she usually goes to with her cousin and her best ...
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Time goes by. In some places too quickly, in others, too slow, and there are places where time seems to stop. Sant Llorenç street is one of the oldest streets in Esplugues de Llobregat. Most of the families have lived there for many generations. However, during the ...
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Five really posh snobby girls go out one weekend to shoot a documentary about the tuning phenomenon. Cars, "tuners", garages, brand clothing, snooty people and immigrants. How prejudiced are ...
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Antonio is 86 years old and lives alone. It is not a cherished solitude, suddenly he found himself surrounded by absences and he has had to learn to live surrounded by memories. Now he paints in his studio surrounded by pictures, sketches and paintings. He also spends time ...
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L’Arc is a bar that represented a “red” meeting point of nonconformists, dissidents and dreamers in the darkest years of the Franco regime. This documentary unveils the secret night-life of this peculiar and mythical pub with a 50-year history. A sarcastic ...
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The Strangers are Marcela from Peru, Pavel from the Czech Republic and Yukiko from Japan. All of them live in the city that better suits their personal journey: Barcelona. On a day like today, they have gone to take some pictures around the city in order to share these images ...
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The Land of Clay is the land created by the sediment carried by the Ebro river during its happy centuries. A land where different generations worked in the water up to their knees, from sunrise to sunset, to be able to grow rice. The surviving older generation recall times ...
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This documentary is about the life of a building caretaker called Teresina, who has lived in the same house all her life. Teresina is respected and beloved by all her neighbours and she explains stories that make us think about love, education and ...
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The inhabitants of Castelltallat introduce the daily life of a place close to the sky, where time runs too fast or too slowly, depending on one’s point of view. Approximately twenty farmhouses isolated in the top of these craggy mountains, in the foothills of the ...
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A mother and a daughter look back and recall the figure of a man who marked them deeply: my grandfather, Jaume. The memories of the years they lived together, especially those five years in Algeria, where my grandfather practised medicine, form the emotional map through which ...
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During three days, 30 residents of Sants district, in Barcelona, shut themselves in Sant Medir Church because of a new urban plan that seriously affects their lives. Txedes, Mia and Jordi share something more than a neighbourhood struggle: they live together, remember their ...
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This documentary shows a truck driver’s daily life; a long journey around Europe with the one objective of getting back to the departure point, home, as soon as possible. The director, in search of movement and the excitement of a journey, discovers the real life of his ...
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In 1939, with Franco's troops advancing on Catalonia, many children, sons and daughters of Republicans, were sent abroad. They would live with host families to escape the war. The Dralans family, from Antwerp, took in a boy from Lleida. He was called Antonio, and for 10 ...
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The new image of the old quarter, Ciutat Vella, in Barcelona, excludes part of its old inhabitants, that in the view of some state bodies are the bugs of the buildings. This story shows the pressure some residents in Ciutat Vella suffer with a view to forcing them to leave ...
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In 1903 a new cement works opened in the Garraf massif. Nearby a ‘colony’ (housing) was built for the workers, with an intensive, social and cultural life. The colony disappeared in the 70’s but the people who lived there will never forget ...
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Peter Yang is an atypical, enigmatic and paradoxical Chinese man. The director of the documentary Paula Sarmiento wonders what is so special about this elderly Chinese man who arrived in Barcelona seventy years ago. His vision of life, his particular opinion on religion, and ...
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Roger has given up everything to start a life as a shepherd. His learning involves practical training with Antonio, a lifelong shepherd with a flock of sheep in Llessui. During these two months, his learning will not be based solely on knowledge of the sheep but also on ...
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