Cine-Club: Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed

SPAIN arts & culture presents this charming Spanish road movie by David Trueba based on a true story as part of the Ibero-American Film Showcase 2015.

Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed

• 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 Director 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.

About the Iberoamerican Cultural Attachés Association (AACIA)

The AACIA has the mission to promote, disseminate, and preserve the heritage, culture, and art of Iberoamerica in the Washington D.C. area, while working actively to build bridges between Latin America, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. This mission is achieved by touching a wide and varied audience through cultural activities and media outreach such as the Ibero-American Film Showcase.

View the full program of the Ibero-American Film Showcase 2015.