<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - Cinema]]> 10 <![CDATA[Mallorca claims its traditional cuisine at the San Sebastian Festival]]>

The documentary Mallorca, a recipe book, directed by Majorcan Pablo Bujosa Rodríguez, will close the Culinary Cinema section of the San Sebastián festival with a tour of various towns on the island to reclaim traditional Majorcan cuisine and the gastronomic knowledge passed down from generation to generation.The film, which will premiere at the festival on September 25, focuses on a way of understanding cuisine linked to the territory, seasonal products, and family recipes. According to the film's synopsis, "cooking has never been a neutral act." "One places oneself in front of the fire when hungry, but not only with the intention of satisfying hunger: there is always a little more behind this exercise," it continues. "When we think of a recipe, we do so from a specific place, incorporating who we are, what we have been taught. And when we execute it, we do so respecting rituals we have seen repeated for years," it concludes.

]]> <![CDATA['A walk through El Born' wins the award for best European film at a French festival]]>

The Mallorcan production Un passeig pel Born, directed by Mallorcan Nick Igea, has won the award for best European film at the Bretagne International Film Festival, in France. With this recognition, the film has accumulated 48 international awards obtained at festivals organized in cities such as Vienna, Sydney, London, Paris, Florence, New York, and Los Angeles.

]]> <![CDATA[Shipwrecks]]> One of the favorite pastimes of intellectuals, as we are seeing, is to go against what the masses like. What is least forgivable about Christopher Nolan is not his cinema, but that it is liked, that it makes money, and at the same time enjoys the prestige of a good part of the critics and the Academy.

]]> <![CDATA[L'Atlàntida crowns 'Lionel' and honors Oscar winner Alexandre Desplat]]>

The film Lionel, by Carlos Saiz, has been the big winner of the 16th edition of the Atlàntida Mallorca Film Fest, which this Sunday lowered the curtain after registering its most massive edition. The festival also honored the French composer Alexandre Desplat, winner of two Oscars and distinguished with the Master of Cinema award for a career that includes soundtracks such as The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape of Water.

]]> <![CDATA[Javier Bardem, in Palma: "Silence always encourages those who perpetrate crimes"]]>

Javier Bardem defended this Sunday in Palma that people with public projection should express their opinion on major current debates. “Whoever has a loudspeaker, should do it. I don't demand it from anyone, but if you can, it's good to do it”, he stated during the presentation ofThe loved one at the'Atlàntida Mallorca Film Fest. The actor has justified this position, in addition to ensuring that “silence always encourages those who perpetrate crimes”.

]]> <![CDATA[Portrait (of five artists) of a generation saved by cynicism]]>

“I think I can be the voice of my generation… Or at least a voice of a generation” is the most iconic phrase of the character Hannah Horvath in Girls, the series written by and starring Lena Dunham, which is already one of the best generational narratives of the early 21st century. In the case of Mallorca, in the midst of the 2020s, a whole host of young artists are giving voice to their generation. Anna Picornell, Miquel Mas, Lluïsa Febrer, Josep Alorda, and Mariona Jaume are five of them. With music, theater, drawing, cinema, and dance, respectively, they capture their Zeitgeist (the spirit of an era, in German). The moment they have to live through – like Hannah – grants them this fair dose of enthusiasm, marked by a realism that doesn't quite become pessimistic, and a need to define themselves shaped by social media.

]]> <![CDATA["We have had to claim ourselves so much, that we are obsessed with ourselves"]]>

A setting, a laptop with a webcam, and an hour of live chat with random people. With these ingredients and the premise of adapting the dramaturgy and choreography based on the conversations, Lluís Garau (La Torre, 1997) created The Meat in 2022, a performance interpreted entirely by him. His obsessions – the internet and identity shaped by algorithms – have led him to this “painful” process of stepping into the shoes of a cybersex addict. After receiving accolades such as the Oscar Wilde Award at the Dublin Theatre Festival, he turned The Meat in film, to go beyond the cybercruising. Directed by Joan Porcel, this thriller documentary has just won two Silver Biznagas in Malaga. It will be screened for the first time in Mallorca at the Atlàntida Film Festival.

]]> <![CDATA[Obsession and consent]]> The premiere of the film Obsessió has coincided in our corner of the world with a remarkable –sexual?– controversy. A politician over 30 years old has finally been expelled from a national-populist political party because he maintains affective relations with a minor, even though the girl is already 16 years old, the minimum for sexual consent (remember that it used to be 14). Between the two there was a student-teacher relationship, which further complicates matters.There has been a tremendous uproar on social media, motivated by the need or not to position ourselves as a society in the midst of a relationship of this kind, or whether it is enough to simply stick to the law and accept the bond once it is admitted that the girl's consent is valid. But there is a too obvious confusion of terms here: the law speaks of sexual consent, and that relationships from then on can be consensual and, therefore, there is no longer a crime of abuse. But what does this have to do with a relationship? We don't even know, nor do we have to know, if there has ever been sex between the two, apart from the love story ("sentimental relationship", says the professor in a public statement) that has motivated the fuss.Although we can assume so, the sexual act takes a backseat, because what is interesting to evaluate is to what extent a man over 30 plays fair when he seduces a woman – a woman? – so young, who moreover was ‘educating’. To start evaluating this is not for puritans or snobs, nor for moralists heirs of the Church, which has always married people even younger. The point is that love can be very beautiful, but life is long, and everything that seems like love to us, in the end may just be emotional dependence, and even abuse, which, beyond being criminally punishable, cannot be overlooked when people are not very aware of what they are doing or feeling. The writer Vanessa Springora has made an admirable book about all this (The Consent); it is the same ‘in love’ girl who then turns to society and asks: Why did you allow me to?In the recently released film Obsession, we see something similar: a boy makes a girl fall in love with him with a magic spell, and from then on he can't get rid of her. The film is becoming a phenomenon, and I'm not surprised, because it's magnificently shot and acted, especially by the actress (Inde Navarrete) who plays the 'in love' girl. The consummation of the young fool's sex-affective dream transforms into a major horror story, because there is nothing more terrifying than a forced love. Or a true love in a world where it no longer has a place, or when the lover doesn't know how to live up to what is given to him. Some have wanted to see in the film also an allegory of forced consent, or of those relationships based on deceit, or of the emotional dependence of young loves, which are always painfully unhealthy. And who is the monster, then, the fatally 'in love' girl or the one who has forced this love with wicked arts?

]]> <![CDATA[Pollença turns the memory of the Patron Saint into a film story]]>

About fifty people have participated in the creation of The Last Day of May: The Other Heroes, a short film linked to the events of May 31, 1550, and premiered this week in Pollença as part of the events leading up to the Patrona festival. The production, directed by Martí Pallicer, recovers a lesser-known part of that historical episode and focuses on characters who, despite having existed, are not part of the most popular narrative of the festival.

]]> <![CDATA[Troy trans]]> Before it has premiered, everyone is already talking about it… I'm thinking about the version of theOdyssey that Christopher Nolan has filmed, which will be seen on the big screens next July. We already know that before this director, one of the most in-form cinematic artists of recent decades, had signed the story ofOppenheimer and before the adventures of Batman. The controversy is being generated by all those on social media who oppose certain roles being played by certain actors. Thus, the rumor – which seems to have been confirmed – that Helen of Troy will be played by a Black actress, Lupita Nyong'o, and that Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page), a transgender man, might end up playing, no less than, the warrior Achilles. Recently, a new version of Mozart's life has premiered on television –Amadeus, on Skyshowtime – and I saw that the Salzburg genius was (magnificently) played by Will Sharpe, who is half Japanese, and that the Jewish and Italian librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte and the Austrian musician Süssmayr, who finished the Requiem, were played by Black actors. All of this might have been laughable a few years ago; right now it is motivating parodies on X, in which, however, a supposed injustice is highlighted: that we would never allow a historical Black character to be played by a white actor, like for example an Obama biopic embodied by Simón Andreu. If skin color doesn't matter, how can we defend ourselves if we are anti-racist, why is it concerning that Helen of Troy is played by a Black woman (even if she's very beautiful)? And it is evident that behind this there is a lot of guilty conscience and that from the cultural industries there is a desire to bet not only on diversity in jobs – and to give everyone a role in global productions: to satisfy quotas – but to compensate for the invisibility of race in past films. Even though this leads us to show a Mozart's Vienna with more racial diversity than today's New York, distorting the historical narrative, just as Clint Eastwood distorted it when he didn't include any black soldiers in the films he shot almost twenty years ago about World War II, it is also not well regarded that there are no women in the plot, even though a war or gangster film might force us to (think of Scorsese's filmography). It is no longer about representing 'reality', but about making a mirror that projects not what we are, but what we would like to be, and that no matter how much it questions our weaknesses as a species, it does so at least without forgetting that we are different, plural and supposedly fair in castings, no matter how much this form of justice now leads us to falsify a past that yes, for art has always been an excuse. As Hitchcock said: “Cinema is four hundred empty seats”, that is to say, more than an art, it is an audience above all else, and it will be this audience that decides whether or not to accept these liberties. And I think that not only does it accept them, but it asks for them, or celebrates that the work also obliges it to take a stance even before buying the ticket and enjoying it. 

]]> <![CDATA[Michael, more whitewashed]]> The success of a movie so bad it's a parody like Bohemian Rhapsody has punished us with a trail of musical biopics following the same pattern: glorification of the idol and tiptoeing around the most scandalous aspects of their biographies. Sometimes, they outright ignore them, as if they weren't fundamental facts, even in the idols' artistic work. It's not cinema: it's legacy management.

]]> <![CDATA["Before you entered the cinema just for the poster"]]>

Toni Bestard (Bunyola, 1973) has about twenty audiovisual projects under his belt, including the series Norats and Fúria and feature films such as Pullman, I Am Your Father and El perfecto desconocido. In 2017 he directed the short documentary El somni efímer, a piece that now closes the exhibition Palma, ciutat de cines, dedicated to the old cinemas of the City, which can be seen at La Misericòrdia. On the occasion of this re-release, he talks with ARA Balears about cinema, memory and new projects.

]]> <![CDATA[The man who painted the giant posters for the cinemas in Palma]]>

Palma's cinemas haven't always been promoted with digitally printed posters or illuminated screens. For decades, large hand-painted posters announcing the week's new releases adorned the facades of many theaters. Behind many of those monumental images was the same name: Rafael Ruiz. Now, his work is being brought back to mind with the exhibition Palma, city of cinemaswhich can be seen at the Misericordia cultural center. Among other historical documents, the exhibition includes original material from the poster artist and the documentary The ephemeral dreamDirected by Toni Bestard.

]]> <![CDATA[Chalamet's ego]]> I wouldn't want to be Timothée Chalamet's publicist. If he's been fired, he must be relieved after an exhausting awards season. I hope we have a Karla Sofía Gascón every year.

]]> <![CDATA[Ibiza: more festivals than cinemas]]>

Ibiza has two operating commercial cinemas: the family-owned Regio cinema in San Antonio de Portmany, and the one known as the 'multicines' in Vila, owned by Aficine, the largest and practically only cinema exhibitor in the Balearic Islands. It's a meager showing, in line with the reduction in screens and seating capacities that has been occurring in Spain for years. Both companies are struggling to withstand the current mediocrity of Hollywood and the pressure from platforms like Netflix. On the other hand, if you start counting film festivals, you'd think Ibizans were true cinephiles: Ibicine, Ibizacinefest, Ibiza Halloween Festival, Festival Dolor de Cabeza (Headache Festival), Muestra de cortos de las fiestas de San Bartolomé (Short Film Showcase of the San Bartolomé Festival)... not to mention other festivals originating outside the island, such as MECAL Air Ib MECAL.

]]> <![CDATA[Pumps]]> In the extraordinary series Tehran (Apple TV) we see all the horrific machinations the Israelis engage in to overthrow Iran's theocratic regime. The fiction is Israeli, and we might think it's a politically charged message aimed at the Iranian regime or people, exposing the immense failings of their government, which it largely is. But at the same time, what's revealed is the unscrupulousness of Israeli intelligence itself, the Mossad, the way it uses and abuses its agents, and the horrific and tragic excess of its methods to destroy a regime that wants to arm itself not only to dominate the region but also to devastate it.

]]> <![CDATA[Inca screens for the first time in Mallorca 'The Invasion of the Barbarians', an anti-Francoist film about memory and reparation]]>

The 'Inca has memory' series hosts the screening of The barbarian invasionFrom director Vicent Monsonís, an anti-Francoist film that intertwines past and present to reflect on repression and the need for redress. This is the first time the film has been shown in Mallorca.

]]> <![CDATA[Only 14% of films shot or dubbed in Catalan are shown in the Balearic Islands]]>

Cinemas in the Balearic Islands screened only 16 of the 114 films and documentaries shot, dubbed, or subtitled in Catalan that premiered in the commercial circuit during 2025. This figure represents 14% of the total and places the Balearic Islands as the Catalan-speaking territory with the least presence of Catalan-language films, according to a report by Plataforma per la Lle. The study, based on data from the Department of Linguistic Policy of the Generalitat of Catalonia and information provided by distributors and exhibitors, confirms that 85% of Catalan-language releases in 2025 could not be seen in the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, or Andorra. All of the Catalan-language films reached cinemas in Catalonia, but only 20 were screened in the Valencian Community (17.5%). 17 in Andorra (14.9%), and 16 in the Balearic Islands. Only two titles, Wolfgang and Sea and skyThe films could be seen in all four territories, though not always simultaneously. The report reveals a "very uneven" distribution of Catalan-language cinema and an "extremely limited" offering outside of Catalonia. In the Balearic Islands, almost all premieres were concentrated in Palma, mainly at CineCiutat, with a negligible presence on the other islands. Regarding the version, ten of the 16 films screened in the Balearic Islands were shown in their original Catalan. Dubbing is very uncommon, which, according to Plataforma per la Llengua (Platform for the Language), limits the accessibility of Catalan-language cinema to a wider audience. The organization points out that even when films are dubbed or subtitled, theaters tend to schedule few screenings, at off-peak times, for only a few days, and without significant promotion. This makes it difficult for audiences to become aware of the available films and establish a habit of going to Catalan-language cinemas.

]]> <![CDATA[The cinemas that Palma lost… and that now come back to memory]]>

Palma is revisiting the memory of the cinemas that, for decades, shaped the city's cultural and social life. The 'Palma, City of Cinemas' project, promoted by the Consell de Mallorca and developed entirely by the Mallorca Sound and Image Archive (ASIM), combines an immersive exhibition and a publication that reconstruct the history of the theaters that transformed cinema into a collective ritual. The exhibition can be visited in the Chapel of Mercy and on the first floor of the Entrepatis building, within the cultural center, from February 6 to April 11, 2026. The tour offers a journey through the evolution of Palma's cinemas and their social role through emblematic pieces, such as the iconic Metropolitan poster, vintage projectors, handbills, and materials by poster artist Rafael Ruiz.

]]> <![CDATA[According to his mother, Jaume Carrió was more of a video game console player than a movie buff.]]>

The music played loudly and reached every room of the house: from Raimon and Maria del Mar Bonet in Los Suaves, to Metallica and Scorpions. "It must be because we had music playing all the time that he's picked up our musical tastes, especially his father's," says Antònia Artigues, mother of film director Jaume Carrió (Esporles, 1983). "When he was 12 or 13, we went to see Los Suaves and he burst into tears during the concert. He's a very sensitive child. He also cries at the movies. Even today, if we go to see a film together and he gets emotional and I don't, he looks at me and says: Fuck"Mom."

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