We are welcoming the director Ventura Pons to the screening.

BARCELONA (UN MAPA) is based on a stage production by Lluïsa Chenille, which director Ventura Pons was compelled to bring it to the cinema, entranced by its dialogue and relationships. In doing so he has maintained much of the intensity and claustrophobia of the production in a series of five duets centring on an elderly couple who rent rooms in their apartment to three people. Each conversation reveals more about the couple until the final conversation, when long held secrets are released. The cadence of the dialogue is enthralling and the performances magical. While the human dramas may seem far-fetched, the resonance with the images of General Franco that open the piece lead to the film as metaphor for the recent history of Catalonia. A fascinating drama.

Critical acclaim for Barcelona (A Map):

The beautifully nuanced and paced conversations meander through incest, fraud and conflagration. As the powerful stories behind these apparently minor lives emerge, they all turn artfully on the basic theme of isolation and how to deal with it. (Variety)

Barcelona (a map) certifies that with Ventura Pons we are in the presence of one of our more intelligent, artful filmmakers of emotion. (Fotogramas)

Barcelona (a map) is, really, the secret map of a small world, simple, and apparently normal, which surprises with its convoluted ins and outs. The portrait of that petit-bourgeois universe, full of shadows, goes further cinematographically to also inundate the whole of Barcelona, perhaps turning into a fresco painting of the whole of humanity. (El Mundo)

"They won the war but lost the peace" has stated Ventura Pons, who at the end of his film shows again the same archive images of the main credits. These are the images of a hungry Barcelona who throws itself to the streets to cheer the entry of Franco's army. In these images resides the key of a splendid film about the permanent defeat. (La Vanguardia)

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