WAN XIA
O.V. in Cantonese and Spanish subtitled in Spanish and English
There are over 200,000 Chinese in Spain, and yet they remain a mystery to the locals. Silvia Rey carries on the path of her short film under the same name, inhabiting (like the mischievous little ghost in the voiceover) a Chinese senior citizens' centre in Madrid, an oriental Lynchian atmosphere with flashes of absurd humour, where a generation that migrated in the 1980s, after having lived through the Second World War, Mao's revolution, the Spanish economic boom and the crisis, is living out their golden age. From the hand of one of the retirees, Chen Jianguo (a name that means "Founder of the Republic"), we also visit that China that, mentally, they never left, and its extravagant places.
Nominated for the AC/E First Prize for Best Director of a Spanish Film
Direction: Silvia Rey Canudo
Script: Silvia Rey Canudo
Cinematography: Julian Elizalde
Editing: Silvia Rey, Cesar Velasco Broca
Sound: Nicolas Tsabertidis
Production: Luis Angel Ramirez
Production Company: Imval Madrid Sl
Silvia Rey Canudo
Director, scriptwriter and programmer, holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Master's degree in Creative Documentary from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. In 2012 she made her first non-fiction feature film Dios sabe. Her subsequent works have been screened at prestigious events in Spain, Argentina, Peru, Mexico and Algeria. Her latest short film, Wan Xia, The Last Light of The Sunset, won the Best National Short Film Award at DocumentaMadrid 2018 and became a finalist for the Goya Awards. Wan Xia, derived from this same project, will be premiering at the Seville European Film Festival.