XX Boston Ibero American Film Festival

The Spanish film Living is Easy with Eyes Closed will be showcased at the Festival on October 9th.

The Boston Ibero-American Film Festival is an annual showcase of contemporary films from more than a dozen countries in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. Its purpose is to provide a venue for the exploration through art of the realities, the social values and the cultural identity of the region and its countries. It also allows all audiences to appreciate the diversity and complexity that characterize Latin American and Iberian cinema, by the hand of some of its most acclaimed filmmakers, and its most promising new talents.

Spain at Boston Ibero-American Film Festival

Living is Easy with Eyes Closed

• On October 9th at 7 pm.
• Directed by David Trueba, Spain, 2013, 108 minutes. With Javier Cámara, Natalia de Molina, Francesc Colomer.
• Winner of 6 Goya Awards in 2014. Original title: Vivir es fácil con los ojos cerrados.
• In Spanish with English subtitles.

Beatles fans will recognize the title; the words stem from the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever. John Lennon wrote it in 1966, while in southern Spain playing a minor character in Richard Lester’s anti-war movie How I Won the War.

This forms the backdrop of David Trueba’s film about Antonio, a Spanish schoolteacher who is also an avid Beatles-fan. When he learns that Lennon is filming in Almeria, he sets out to meet him. Along the way he makes friends with Belen, a twenty-year-old pregnant girl who is on her way home to her family, and Juanjo, a teenage boy. Lennon’s words take on special significance in a story set in Franco’s Spain.

About David Trueba

David Trueba began his career as a director in 1996 with La Buena Vida, presented at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. His following films were Obra Maestra (2000); Soldados de Salamina (2003), presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Festival; Bienvenido a Casa (2006), Best Director Award at the Málaga Festival; and the documentary La Silla de Fernando (2006).

In 2010, he created and directed the TV series ¿Qué fue de Jorge Sanz?, and in 2011 he wrote and directed Madrid, 1987, which participed in the Official Selection of the Sundance Festival and was screened in Zabaltegi at the San Sebastian Festival.