Film Forum

From the internationally acclaimed director of THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973) and EL SUR (1983): Víctor Erice’s first feature film in 31 years. Centered around a lurid film-within-a-film, a mysteriously disappeared actor and the stalled late-career filmmaker who becomes obsessed with finding him, Erice masterfully paints a literal journey from Madrid to the Andalusian coast, and a profoundly poetic (and semi-autobiographical) one — through memory, disappointment, and, finally, the magic of cinema.  

Presented with support from the Robert E. Appel Fund for Spanish and Portuguese Language Films

2023     164 MIN.     SPAIN     IN SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES     FILM MOVEMENT

Trailer

Reviews

“Few filmmakers have such a hold on cineastes with such a slim body of work…a long-awaited return for the eighty-two-year-old director, a career summation and an exquisite reckoning of cinema’s power to haunt and enchant… Erice’s filmmaking remains as fresh and clear, as unfussily elegant, as ever.”
– Leigh Singer, Sight and Sound

“A moving meditation on existence, memory, and cinema’s potential to preserve them both.”
– Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

“A consummate work of filmmaking by a major artist…Slowly but deliberately paced, the movie builds to a crescendo in a closing act where a movie itself — a real movie shot and projected on celluloid — plays a pivotal role, resuscitating forgotten lives and memories as only the cinema can do. Erice has managed, at once slyly and poignantly, to justify his long absence from the scene in a film that’s all about absences, using a medium that many deem to be dying to quite literally bring back the dead.”
– Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“Winningly satisfying and cerebral... In his four main features, including this, [Erice] justifies a major reputation by offering something special each time through.”
– David Katz, The Film Stage