ALEGRÍA
O.V. in Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Spanish subtitled in Spanish
Using the excuse of a wedding (arranged within the Sephardic community), Alegría (Cecilia Suárez, La casa de las flores) returns to her native Melilla, a city where the three Mediterranean cultures converge: the Christian, the Jewish and the Muslim. She also returns to her conflicts arising out of her Jewish roots, which she will explore together with a Christian and a Muslim woman. A bright comedy about multiculturalism and its director Violeta Salama's particular way of understanding it, approached from her own experience (her father is Sephardic and her mother Catholic), in a luminous and surprising portrait of Melilla and its unique identity.
Nominated for the AC/E First Prize for Best Director of a Spanish Film
Direction: Violeta Salama
Script: Violeta Salama, Isa Sánchez
Cinematography: Pau Esteve Birba
Sound: Tamara Arévalo
Cast: Cecilia Suárez, Laia Manzanares, Sarah Perles, Mara Guil, Luisa Mayol, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Emilio Palacios, Joe Manjón, Zorah Liba, Adelfa Calvo
Production: Clara Nieto, Olmo Figueredo
Production Company: La Claqueta PC, Powehi Films, La Cruda Realidad, Alegría Película AIE y 9AM Media Lab
Violeta Salama
Alegría is Violeta Salama's (Granada, 1982) directorial debut. The film is based on some of her experiences in Melilla, a cultural melting pot where Christians, Muslims and Jews live side by side. She lived there as a teenager before settling in Malaga and starting to work in the audiovisual sector. Graduated in Audiovisual Communication, with a Master's degree in Creative Documentary and a postgraduate degree in Film at the Vancouver Film School, Salama worked as an assistant director in series such as Crematorio (2011) and in films such as Dictado (2012), El sexo de los ángeles (2012) and Blancanieves (2012), in addition to working as a scriptwriter on films such as El autor (2017) and Adiós (2019) and series such as Arde Madrid (2018) and Los favoritos de Midas (2020).