Spanish Film Week 2023: The Dinner Guest

Director: Ángeles González Sinde

Cast: Susana Abaitua, Ginés García Millán, Adriana Ozores, Fernando Oyagüez, Iñaki Miramón, Estrella Alonso

After devoting herself for 14 years to other tasks (including her job as Minister of Culture), Ángeles González-Sinde returns to filmmaking as director with the adaptation of the saddest autobiographic novel written by Gabriela Ybarra, whose grandfather was kidnapped and murdered by the terrorist group ETA in Bilbao in 1977. Her parents had hidden that fact from her for many years and she only found out in 2011 while helping her mother to cope with cancer. An intimate, distressing and sorrowful film that appeals to people’s hearts, narrated with considerable moderation and restraint so as not to harm the feelings of a family marked by tragedy. Structured and encompassing two time periods, the film proves that intimacy is always more important than the surrounding political reality and that one cannot live in the present and make plans for the future without confronting and coming to terms with the past. A brilliant performance by the two actresses that play the role of the daughter and mother in this fiction movie: Susana Abaitua and Adriana Ozores.

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A la madre de Icíar le diagnostican un cáncer incurable. Sabiendo que pronto perderá a su madre, comienza a indagar su pasado familiar. Su abuelo paterno, Javier, fue secuestrado en 1977 por ETA y estuvo cautivo durante casi un mes. En la familia nunca se habló del asunto y su padre sigue oponiendo resistencia cuando intenta hacerlo afrontar su pasado. ¿Lograrán acercar a padre e hija las emociones que surgen durante el procesamiento de los traumas pasados y presentes? La película está basada en la exitosa novela autobiográfica homónima de Gabriela Ybarra.

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