Keys to understanding contemporary Spanish cinema

Location: Room 2.A.03. Madrid Campus – Puerta de Toledo.

Program

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Monday, June 22nd: Cinema and its Reception in the Streaming Era
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM. The Spanish Audience in the 21st Century. Inaugural Lecture by Manuel Palacio, Professor of Audiovisual Communication (UC3M).
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM. New Cinemas, New Criticism. Carlos Marañón, Director of Cinemanía magazine.

Tuesday, June 23rd: Spanish Cinema Facing Technological Challenges
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM. Age Matters: The Wattpad Cinema Phenomenon. Rubén Romero Santos (UC3M).
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM. Blink and You’ll Miss It: Artificial Intelligence and VFX in Spanish Cinema—Case Studies (Part I). Ana Mejón (UC3M).
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM. Blink and You’ll Miss It: Artificial Intelligence and VFX in Spanish Cinema—Case Studies (Part II). Ana Mejón (UC3M).

Wednesday, June 24th: Critical Reception and Cultural Debate
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM. The Spanish Film Canon. Rubén Romero Santos (UC3M).
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM. A New Spanish Cinema? Constructing a Trend Through the Media (Part I). Juan Carlos Ibáñez (UC3M).
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM. A New Spanish Cinema? Constructing a Trend Through the Media (Part II). Juan Carlos Ibáñez (UC3M).

Thursday, June 25th: New Perspectives on Spanish Cinema
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM. Women at the Audiovisual Crossroads. Sagrario Beceiro (UC3M).
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM. Must-See Spanish Comedies. Carmen Ciller (UC3M).

Friday, June 26th
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM. Male Desire and Queer Cinema in 21st-Century Spanish Film (Part I). Asier Gil Vázquez (UC3M).
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. Male Desire and Queer Cinema in 21st-Century Spanish Film (Part II). Asier Gil Vázquez (UC3M).
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM. Victims of Their Own Success? Adventures and Misadventures of 21st-Century Spanish Cinema. Final debate, closing remarks, and conclusions. Rubén Romero Santos (UC3M).

Course Objectives and Motivations

Spanish cinema is currently experiencing a period of remarkable vitality. Over the last five years, Spanish films have achieved unprecedented recognition at the most prestigious national and international film festivals. Within our borders, the San Sebastián International Film Festival stands out for awarding three consecutive Golden Shells to Spanish productions: O Corno by Jaione Camborda (2023), Tardes de soledad by Albert Serra (2024), and Los domingos by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (2025). Internationally, the success has been even more significant: Carla Simón’s Alcarràs won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2022, and 2025 marked a milestone with two films competing at Cannes, where Óliver Laxe’s Sirat claimed the festival’s second most prestigious honor, the Jury Prize.
While triumphing among critics and tastemakers, Spanish cinema is equally successful at the box office, thanks to the work of directors such as Rodrigo Sorogoyen (As Bestas), Dani de la Orden (Casa en flames), or Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (La llamada). This course analyzes the themes reflected in their work through an interdisciplinary and educational lens, designed to appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as anyone interested in general culture.
The curriculum approaches the subject matter with an innovative and original focus, considering Spanish social conditions alongside industrial circumstances—including synergies with the television industry, streaming platforms, video essays, and digital curation. Within this framework, several sessions specifically highlight the rise of women in key roles throughout the filmmaking process. Furthermore, the faculty maintains gender parity, adhering to the UC3M’s III Equality Plan, and brings together academic specialists in Spanish cinema with seasoned professionals from the film industry.

Upon completing the course, students will realize that the most emblematic value of the classical world is not the elitist character of its education or a particular monumental aesthetic (to cite two typical categories of the interpretation given throughout the 19th century), but rather the capacity to thematize every human problem, transforming it into a source of personal and collective teaching, fruitful and always enriching. From this experience, capable of converting the intimate drama of existence into a rational theme (thus allowing the birth of philosophy and Attic tragedy), or the difficulties of community life into political reflection, or the imitation of nature into art and technique, emerges that freedom of spirit that permeates all humanisms throughout history and that remains one of the priority ideals of the contemporary world.

Furthermore, the classical tradition is much closer to the paradigms of digital culture than one might imagine: if the “digital humanities” constitute in a certain way a form of re-imagining the traditional humanities, rethinking the development of the human being in relation to their history and culture through new possibilities for creating and disseminating knowledge, it is well known that the legacy of Greco-Roman civilization has been performing this same task for centuries, updating itself in each era, according to the urgencies of the societies that return to study Antiquity, to find in it answers about their own time.