The 29th Festival de Málaga presented three films on Monday 9th March: El abrazo de los peces (15 años después), Ese niño de la fotografía. Carlos Saura and Raquel Meller. Insumisa y divina.

The Echegaray Theatre hosted the screening of El abrazo de los peces (15 años después), the new feature film by Chema Rodríguez in which he proposes an immersive sensory experience, inviting spectators to enter the universe of deafblindness and to put themselves in the place of the protagonists, getting closer to their way of experiencing the world.

Filmed at the Santa Ángela de la Cruz Centre in Seville, the only residential centre for deafblind people in Spain and one of the few in the world, El abrazo de los peces (15 años después) follows the daily lives of Juande, Victoria, Cristian, José Luis, Carmen and their mediators.

Aware of the importance of these professionals, Chema Rodríguez emphasised:  "Each deafblind person is completely different from the other. Each requires their own language. Mediators are their ears and eyes. That's why this work they do is amazing to me and that's one of the things we wanted to show in the film. They are the real heroes."

Father of Clara, a deafblind woman who lives in the centre where the film was shot, Chema Rodríguez transforms his personal experience into a cinematographic one, in which he reflects on communication, emotion and the human capacity to build bonds even in the most extreme conditions.

The Christine Ruiz-Picasso Auditorium hosted Ese niño de la fotografía. Carlos Saura, directed by the Spanish film and documentary producer Anna Saura. Daughter of the renowned filmmaker Carlos Saura, Anna Saura wanted to recover his legacy with this film that offers her father's worldview as an example of life and passion for creativity.
The filmmaker passed away in February 2023 at the age of 91, leaving behind more than 50 films that have won awards at the world's most prestigious film festivals, photographs... However, few people know how he lived his final years, culminating one of the most prolific careers in the history of cinema and contemporary culture. "For me it was very important to show what my father was really like, this person who was so passionate about everything he did," said the director.

"I knew it was going to be very complicated to make a documentary because I had a lot of work and projects in development. When he died, I saw that he had a lot of recorded material and we started to play with the archive and with the photos," Anna confessed about the ins and outs of the filming and said that it had been a very nice process: "You go back and look at all that material and memories blossom and the fact of seeing how present in my life my father was. It was very nice and pleasant."

The presentation of the documentary was also attended by Juan Antonio Vigar, director of the Festival de Málaga, who recalled: "I remember very well the last time she was at the festival. On that occasion she coincided with Carla Simón, in which she made a very emotional speech in which she showed what she had meant to her and to many of the directors of her generation. An absolute reference and a model, an inspiration, a path to follow. I think your father was surprised at that moment and really realised who he was and that makes us as a Festival very proud."

The session continued with the gift of a painting by the Malaga artist Javier Calleja. "It was he who suggested that I do this representation of Lola Flores and donate it to the festival," commented Anna Saura. A performance inspired by the edition of "Lola Flores", which combines cinema, photography, painting and music. "It was the first time he painted in a size larger than A3, marking what was to be a new stage in his artistic creation," commented the filmmaker's daughter. Part of this process is reflected in Carlos Saura. Ese niño de la fotografía.

Javi Calleja, the author of the painting "Lola Flores", stated that: "Sometimes in an artist's career there are dreams that come true and meeting Saura is something I could never have imagined." "An edition that was made from the original frame of the film. Sometimes I think about how he painted. And now I've realised that he drew and painted the way he wanted to, the way he would have liked to, the way he would have liked to record."

The end of the day saw the presentation at the Albéniz Cinema of the documentary Raquel Meller. Insumisa y divina, by director Vicky Calavia, which revisits the international figure of Raquel Meller, international star of the cuplé and silent film actress admired by figures such as Charlie Chaplin, Isadora Ducan and Cecil B. DeMille who, after conquering Europe, fell into oblivion, with historical rigour and a contemporary perspective.

Written and directed by Vicky Calavia, the film traces the life and artistic journey of a woman ahead of her time, who defied social conventions and elevated the cuplé to the category of universal art.

"This documentary is a subjective vision – like everything we do in film – of a woman with an indomitable character (like all women from Aragon) who anticipated the great idols of cinema but who had personal depths. She was a 'Carmen', a passionate, Latin woman," the director pointed out. 

Using archival material, the film reconstructs the portrait of an unrepeatable artist whose influence continues to be felt today. The film involves specialists, historians and current artists who revisit her legacy, such as El Niño de Elche or La Shica, who dialogue with the figure of Meller from the present, with emblematic pieces such as El Relicario or La violetera, establishing a bridge between tradition and experimentation.