A film director who hasn’t directed in decades. We talk about the protagonist of ‘Close the eyes‘, the film director represented by Manolo Solo, but also the director of the film himself, Víctor Erice. As if it were a ‘matrioska’, according to another of the protagonists, José Coronado, ‘Close your eyes’ works like one of those fictions in which the line with reality is blurred.

It is not a ‘biopic’, but it is a film in which one of our most special film directors plays at referring to himself and making a review of the recent history of Spain and his cinema. Actor Manolo Solo says that, indeed, Erice “dropped at some point during filming that his character could have been him.”

Ana Torrent is clearer about it. The one who was the protagonist of her first film, ‘The Spirit of the Hive’, returns to star in the latter with a role written for her in which she recognizes that many of the things that Erice knows are in the script. That of Víctor Erice, candidate for represent Spain at the Oscarswill coincide in theaters with the latest by Nanni Moretti, a director with whom he “crossed paths” at the last Cannes Festival.

Directors who talk to us about cinema

In ‘The Sun of the Future’, Moretti plays a film director who loves films that are designed to be seen in theaters, not on platforms. During the festival’s press conference, the director himself acknowledged that he is not interested in making movies “thinking of a young man from Pennsylvania who can watch his movie on his cell phone.” It’s almost a genre in itself: directors who talk to us about cinema.

Tarantino dedicated ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ to the cinema that led him to be a director; Woody Allen knew how to laugh at himself in ‘A Made in Hollywood Finale’ and Spielberg, recently, He gave us his love letter to his family and to the cinema in ‘Los Fabelman’. In the latter, he not only showed us where his passion comes from or some of the tricks that he has used throughout his career, such as those long sequence shots through which different characters and actions go through.

And without a doubt, the great film about cinema is the one that everyone drinks from. That ‘8 1/2’ in which Fellini He told us about his creativity crisis after the success of ‘La dolce vita’. With a script that changed on the fly in a filming that Claudia Cardinale remembered as a noisy, fun and magical circus.