Alberto Martín Menacho
Switzerland, Spain | 2023 | 106 min
World premiere
Language : Spanish
Subtitles : English, French
In this small village in Extremadura, population has been declining since the 1960s, driven away by unemployment. Alberto Martín Menacho returns to this region he knows intimately, and together with local youths, spins stories in a reality suspended between tradition and modernity, human and animal, between a thousand-year-old oak tree and Tinder. A strikingly graceful debut film.
In Salvaléon, a small village in Extremadura, unemployment and a lack of professional opportunities have been driving people away since the 1960s. The region - which was the birthplace of the filmmaker’s grandfather - provides Alberto Martín Menacho with both a fertile cinematographic ground and a cast of characters. ‘Antier Noche’, which means ‘the night before last’, is an old-fashioned expression that the filmmaker learned from his grandmother and which has now fallen out of usage. Like its title, the film is suspended in space and time, somewhere between tradition and modernity, between man and animal, between a thousand-year-old oak tree and Tinder. Filming a group of young people with whom he has worked previously, Alberto Martín Menacho weaves together reality and fiction, freely composing stories with them, and mapping a territory made up of hares, greyhounds, summer fires, love stories and parties, bolstered by still-solid bonds, even between generations. A stunningly graceful first film.
Emilie Bujès
Mi amado, las montañas, 2017
