Within the Spanish pantheon of cinema, Carlos Saura (who died this winter at the age of 91, shortly before the Berlinale) counts amongst its most prolific and awarded auteurs. Across a career that spanned almost seven decades, Saura collected trophies at Europe's most important festivals (notably, in Cannes and Berlin), along with multiple Foreign Film Oscar nominations, thus making a decisive contribution to the transformation of Iberian cinema from one of isolation, created under extremely difficult conditions (both economic and, especially, political, given the years of Francisco Franco's dictatorship), into a household brand. Although his endeavors in the realm of fiction remain, by far, the most well-known part of his filmography (with titles such as Cria Cuervos, Peppermint Frappe, or the Flamenco Trilogy), like so many others, Saura began his career in non-fiction: with a trilogy of short films directed in the late 1950s; he returned to the format after more than three decades, in the early 1990s, with Sevilanas (1992), going on to direct 11 more, of various lengths, before passing away – the majority of them focused on subjects related to the arts (music, architecture, painting etc.). 

Flavia Dima

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Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.

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