Paca Almenara

A series of vignettes set in Madrid, where its residents manage to sustain entertainment, hope and love in a city still suffering the wounds caused by the Spanish Civil War.

Maria has just moved into a decaying flat in a poor neighbourhood. She left her family in the countryside because she could no longer stand her father's authority. Pregnant by a man who refuses to see her, Maria gets by as a cleaning-woman. When her father is brought to the city for an operation, her mother moves into her flat.

Handsome 25-year-old Cesar had it all -- a successful career, expensive cars, a swank bachelor's pad, and an endless string of beautiful and willing women -- until he is thrown into a strange psychological mystery after a car accident scars his face and lands him in prison.

Rafael, a lonely 40-something butcher, saves a pregnant Marina from an assault by her boyfriend Daniel. Rafael agrees to take Marina in and they happily raise the child together. Years later, Daniel re-enters their lives and turns them upside down.

Tristan is about to turn fifteen. He enjoys the good life his parents have built for him. And yet, it won't be long before his environment of protection, affection and comfort crumbles. From then on, he will learn the taste of loneliness, sadness and that survival is often more important than life.

Miguel Hermoso's Like Lightning offers a fresh take on a familiar scenario, the teenaged boy searching for his unknown father. Pablo is a typical teen, with a fondness for football and sneaking beers with his buddies. He enjoys a comfortable upper-middle class life with his mother (Assumpta Serna), a successful lawyer and former feminist rabble-rouser, but has a gaping hole at the core of his identity: he has no idea who his father is. Preoccupied with the question to the point of obsession, he sets out in search of answers, and finds himself on a trail that leads to the Canary Islands.

While working on a thesis about audiovisual violence, film student Ángela finds a snuff video where a girl is tortured until death. Soon she discovers that she was a former student in her university, and that the authors of the video are not very far either.

A honeymooning couple become entangled in a plot to recover plates for counterfeiting US dollars. SHE thinks she's just retired from a government 'dirty jobs' department, but her superiors have other ideas. HE thinks she's a retired travel agent.

A German documentary filmmaker travels to Madrid to do a TV program about the city and the Spanish civil war commemorating its 50th anniversary.

After the end of the Spanish Civil War, General Antonio Escobar Huerta stoically awaits his execution, accused of military treason and sentenced to death for having sworn allegiance to the Republic. Despite being a man of deep religious convictions, Antonio Escobar decided to make an oath honoring the legally constituted government of the Second Spanish Republic against the military uprising led by Francisco Franco and supported by the Catholic Church. While waiting for his execution in prison, he recalls the beginning of the Civil War, the years of battles during which he ascended to the rank of General, and his own decisions, of which he has no regrets. With a clear conscience, Escobar waits his own execution with the calm of those who know they have done their duty. "If my life and that of all who have fallen serves to avoid this from happening again, our blood will not have been in vain" - Antonio Escobar Huerta.