♪ My very first international travel was to Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar when I was just four years old.

My father was in the Navy Reserve since stationed at Rota for a short time.

My mother took me and my sister to visit him.

I saw the Alhambra and Granada, the medieval fortress from the 13th and 14th centuries.

It must have left an impression on me, because when I returned years later with a high school Spanish class, I stood on the ground there and felt a powerful deja vu.

Having not realized that I had been there before, ever since then, I've had a fascination with Spain, and by the time I visited for Cinema Nomad, I'd been to Spain more than any other country.

Yet I realized I still knew very little about their actual history and culture.

What I quickly became interested in is that Spain has had a long and varied history.

Throughout the ages, Spain was at a crossroads of cultures and religions from the early Iberians, Celts, Romans, Visegrad, Christians, Moors, a Jewish population, monarchs and Catholics, not to mention the various autonomous regions that make up Spain, with several still fighting for indepenence from Spain.

It's an incredible country with a lot to explore.

The cinema history is equally rich and varied, with so many films and filmmakers out there to be discovered.

Ven conmigo!

♪ Hi.

I'm Stephanie.

The Cinema Nomad Join me on brand new adventures.

The world is a wonderful place where people overcome incredible odds to make their mark.

We'll meet filmmakers who are as courageous as they are inspiring.

Cinema Nomad connects across cultures to learn, explore, share and carry on a heritage of cinematic storytelling.

♪ Guillem is unique to the Cinema Nomad filmmakers.

He and I already knew each other and we were great friends and collaborators long before Cinema Nomad came into view.

Can I do my hero shot here?

I would love it like I'm garbage.

hey, man, you can do it wherever you want.

Guillem is someone I would trust with my life.

He has stayed in my childhood home, met my family, spent time with my father before he passed away.

Guillem and I have got in and out of trouble together, made some films, had so many laughs and he's even someone I can cry in front of, which for me says a lot.

Guillem is also one of the youngest of our Cinema Nomad filmmakers.

Yet even when I first met him, he was always years ahead in maturity, productivity, and talent.

After I graduated from NYU's Tisch Asia in Singapore, I moved to New York City and became a freelance film director.

A couple of years into this life, I received a message from a grad student of the New York Film Academy looking to hire a professional filmmaker to work on his crew.

We met up, and the rest is history.

Guillem hired me to be his production manager and assistant director for the filming of his thesis, "The Dry Rain."

I liked the story and especially Guillem's aesthetic quality, but more than that, I was blown away by his organizational skills and professionalism.

For a student, he was far beyond the norm.

He had every detail of his film mapped out, from storyboards to editing cuts already in his mind, to music scores, art direction, and more.

From that day on, I knew Guillem would go on to do great things in filmmaking.

We became fast friends while working together on "The Dry Rain," and I knew I wanted Guillem on my team too.

In the following years, I hired him to assistant direct on my short films, "A Mezcal Trilogy," Guillem eventually moved back to Spain and me to New Mexico.

But our friendship endured, and here we are, back together again in Madrid.

After 1492, for around 300 years from when the Spanish explorers and conquerors traveled the world, taking over huge swaths of land.

Spain became one of the richest countries in the world, with colonies in every corner.

However, once Spain's empires started to collapse, much of the world lost interest, and through the 19th century, Spain was almost forgotten by the outside world.

Their bloody Spanish Civil War which preceded World War II, brought Spain back into worldview and drew ideological interest from all over.

With foreigners joining an international brigade to fight the fascists.

Those opposing fascism lost and Spain became even more insulated and detached from the world.

The dictator Francisco Franco ruled for four decades, and after his death, the royal Bourbons retook the throne, led by King Juan Carlos who established a constitutional monarchy.

Since then, the country has been ruled by elected governments, some conservative, some socialist, leaning under a system of democracy with the ceremonial king in place.

There's a warmth here.

There's something the people, the culture, the way we express ourselves is way different.

And I love it.

And this is where I want to be.

I think that's it.

Like the people makes it different and like people here what been what we've been through or what our history is, it sets us to what we are now.

And, you know, I just think we're special.

Spain is one of the world's top tourist destinations, with recent annual estimates of visitors peaking at 97 million, which is almost double Spain's population of just under 50 million.

Over tourism has become an issue, and cities such as Barcelona have tried to enact restrictions to prevent this, to no avail.

Officially, the Kingdom of Spain, the country surrounded by seas, is bordered by Portugal, France, Andorra and Gibraltar, with the North African country of Morocco to its south, just separated by the narrow Strait of Gibraltar In 589, Roman Catholicism became the official religion and the country has been closely associated with the church ever since, sometimes creating political conflict between church and state.

Most of Spain's major towns have ancient origins.

Spain's constitution was enacted in October 1978 as a constitutional monarchy which advocates for freedom, justice, equality, and political pluralism with the separation of powers.

The Crown is meant to be a symbol of national unity and is supposed to remain neutral in politics.

Spain has around 17 autonomous communities, sort of, but not exactly like individual U.S.

states often with disputes arising between these communities and the central government.

The most famous being Andalusia and Catalonia, whom each identify with their own nationalities, along with those of the Galica and the Basque region.

Each with their own languages, flags, and customs.

Spain's official languages include Castilian, Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician.

Spain joined the European Union in 1986 and became one of Europe's leading producers of renewable energy.

Born in Madrid in 1992 Guillem started making films at nine-years-old with a mini DV camera using his family as actors.

When Guillem was 15, he created a web series called cupolas with his friends from school, as he describes it.

Jam worked with his best friends, creating more web series, music videos, and short films.

By 17, Guillem gave his first national TV interview in Spain While in Spain he studied two years of filmmaking, and then graduated from the New York Film Academy with a Masters of Fine Arts.

Guillem moved to LA for a year to work in Hollywood at Lionsgate, and then moved back to Spain to pursue his own projects on his home turf.

Since then, Guillem has created the web series "Hashtag Millennial(S)," worked for social media brands, and over time, he's become a sought after DirecTV commercials and branded content, and has worked as a director for Mega Media of Media Set and Zeta Cinema.

Today, Guillem works as a senior video producer for Super Side in Madrid.

His personal film work includes "Pandora," "Birth," "The Dry Rain" and "Nuria."

Each of which has its own distinct tone and style.

When I ask Guillem for three milestones that got him to where he is today, he told me perseverance, luck and trying three things that I feel many filmmakers need to succeed.

And he said, First of all, I wanted to be a doctor.

so.. Yeah.

but that when I realized that I could do films as a profession or as, like something that you could do as an adult.

I chose that, My uncle gave me a digital camera for my communion, my first communion.

I remember taking pictures on, I think, New Year's Eve or Christmas, and then, I transferred those pictures to my computer, and I start, like, playing with Windows Movie Maker, I ask my family to make certain actions.

So it would be like a graphic novel kind of like thing.

And then in that movie maker, the program, like I would just like, like make a montage with those pictures and like, make my first film.

I think that was, that was it.

Yeah.

I realized that I could do or I could study what I like to do at home.

So I could be I could learn more.

And like, there was a profession to it, like, so there was something that you could do with that.

Madrid is the capital city of both Spain and the autonomous region of Madrid, and it is one of my favorite cities in the world.

In its earliest days, it was an Arab town with a Medina, and it grew up around the Alcazar or castle.

Each neighborhood has its own unique style.

This is said to date back to Philip the Second, who took the Royal Court to Madrid in 1561 under his and his successors' patronage Madrid became a city of contrasts, with an overcrowded center surrounded by palaces, convents, churches and public buildings.

From here, neighborhoods grew out based on social classes divide into upper, middle, and lower quarters Madrid is a center of fine arts and home to world class museums.

The Prado, Reina Sofia, this and Belle Arts.

In the world of literature, it is a major center publishing for the Spanish speaking world.

There's the Royal Opera House, theatres, bullfights, football and more.

Lots of squares, plazas and parks, including the large green space of Retiro, once the royal hunting grounds.

Madrid is home to the gorgeous Atocha train station, with a botanical garden that features at least 400 plant species.

In 2004, Atocha was the site of an Islamist militant terrorist attack that detonated ten bombs and killed at least 193 people, injuring around 1800 across three train stations.

In proof of the resilience of the people of Spain, It is now more beautiful than ever.

Tell me about the web series that you produced with your friends in high school, because that was really a full blown production that.

We were 15 or 16 when I, I was, I remember being at my class and then I, I asked like out loud, who wants to be, who wants to be an actor or an actress in my web series?

We had no idea what that would be like.

I mean, I said that, but I didn't even have a plan.

I just wanted to tell a story.

Okay, I have five people who want to be in it, so I can have five characters.

We were shooting and I was coming up with the story while we were shooting.

We liked it and then we did the second one.

So it was kind of like almost choose your own adventure for us.

And like, I don't know, we came up with eight episodes.

We uploaded the first episode for the second season and I don't know why, it got like, a lot of views, and after that the TV contacted us and said "Okay, we've seen you guys are doing this, blah, blah" And they were surprised because we were really young.

I mean we were not professionals.

We were just like people like kids in high school doing that.

yeah, we were like in the news and then after that, like, we got a lot more views and and stuff.

Some of the world's most important contributors to the arts have derived from Spain.

Novelist Miguel de Cervantes, who created Don Quixote along with authors, poets, playwrights including Galdos, de la Barca, and de Vega.

and of course, amongst the renowned painters are Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Goya and Pablo Picasso.

Perhaps the most widely known painter from modern times.

Don't forget.

Lorca, Dali and Miro.

Oh, how I love Miro.

Me encanta.

In the world of architecture.

There's Gaudi.

Oh my Gaudi Don't worry.

We'll get to him later.

And for me, the world starts and ends with Luis Bunuel.

Originally from Calanda Spain, a titan of cinema.

And for many of us filmmakers, also, the quirky and visually stimulating Pedro Almodovar.

Much like the country itself, for a long time the films of Spain were put into one of two categories, either showing a conservative view of the world versus a more liberal or international view.

The first movie shot in Spain is considered to be "People Coming Out of Noontime Mass at the Cathedral of the Virgin Pilar", filmed in 1897, in Zaragoza.

I traveled to Zaragoza to lay eyes on this stunning church for myself.

What a beautiful city.

Cafe Brawl in 1897 was the first fiction film directed by Fructuos Gelabert.

Until 1915, Barcelona was the center of movie making.

During this time, Segundo de Chomon made special effects films reminiscent of the work of the well-known French filmmaker Georges Melies, working around the same time.

Chomon's first so-called trick film was "Gulliver and El Pais de Los Gigantes."

Other works include "Satana se Divierte" "La Maison Ensorcelée" and "Hotel Electrique."

Chomon and his wife also specialized in producing stencil colored film prints, and were one of the developers of the pathechrome process, patterned by Pathé in 1905.

In the following decades, documentaries about bullfighting were very popular, as well as adaptations of 19th century romantic plays such as "Don Juan Tenorio."

In the 1920s, this trend towards literary adaptations continued.

Notably "That's My Man" Directed by Carlos Fernandez Cuenca.

Based on a book by Carlos Arniches.

Arniches started a theatre whose works then became a favorite of movie adaptations leading up to the Spanish Civil War.

An early short film that Guillem directed as a student at New York Film Academy was "Pandora."

This piece is creepy, but it builds suspense nicely.

A lack of dialog helps this, as well as an intense sound design and a heavy score that screams horror.

Fair warning, by the end, this is a gruesome movie.

It plays with genres of time travel and horror mixed together.

Messages are sent through a box about things to do in the future.

They're innocent at first until it builds into blood and murder.

The film is a modern take on the Greek myth of Pandora's Box.

They were fun projects.

I mean, I was I was a kid, and Pandora was just like, I made this weird concept about, like, a box that gives you, like, a peek to the future.

Like, maybe just it was like, 30 seconds into the future or something like that.

I don't know, like, I, I didn't even know what I did like, and I, I just have fun with it.

And we played it there.

Like, not even the teacher understood what was going on.

I was like, and I was like, I don't like I, I don't even understand what I did.

But that was fun.

Next came "Birth."

Immediately, you see the growth in Guillem's ability to take a concept from script to screen.

A woman goes to check in on a man after someone he loved has died.

We do not know the relationship, until we do.

He confuses his sister with a lover.

A rejected kiss turns to sexual abuse.

The girl squirms as her brother caresses her afterwards.

It is nothing short of disturbing.

Both at the beginning and by the end we get the sense that she's pregnant.

This film plays with time and identity Role play, to save the ones we love?

In "Birth," Guillem collaborates with cinematographer Nicholas Young, who goes on to DP Guillem's thesis film, "The Dry Rain."

"Birth" to me, I had a lot of fun.

Like, there were a lot of, like, I think good themes in that movie, but I didn't know how to express them well yet.

It's a tough one.

I mean, she just she doesn't let it happen.

But she at the moment it's like he's not a aware of what he has done.

And at that moment she understands or she sees him as someone that it's not that it's dependent or that's not aware of what he's done.

So he kind of she just like, accepts it, accepts that reality which is really, really dark.

It's a really awful moment.

And I wasn't afraid at that moment to put it out there.

But now I'm like, when I think about it, ..brrrr.. And that's just because of of novice student filmmaking.

Guillem- Yeah I mean, I think today you could tackle That's a student film, yeah.

you could tackle that Yeah.

well.

I have a confession to make.

One of my obsessions in life is learning about the Spanish Civil War, Which took place between 1936 to 1939.

Over the years, I became more and more obsessed with learning about the Civil War, as it felt to me a precursor to what would later come in world affairs.

If the other side had won, would World War II have even happened?

Would the outcomes be the same?

What would life in Spain have been like?

In a nutshell, the war broke out between the left leaning government known as the Republicans, fighting against the nationalists, which were a right wing military rebellion led by Franco and folks.

Of course, history is not so black and white, But it feels like the ideologies that were being fought over in those days are still do some degree being fought for today around the world.

Robert Capa's now famous photograph of the fallen soldier, taken on September 5th, 1936, is considered to be the first time a camera caught the instant of a man's death in battle.

Some believe that this photograph was staged.

Again, nothing is so black and white except the photo itself.

Capa made documentaries during the war too.

These we know he staged, to some degree, to recreate the battles and share a specific message.

Even Capa's entire life was staged.

But that's a story for another day.

I used the opportunity of being in Spain for Cinema Nomad to explore more of the Spanish Civil war history.

I visited the Museum to the Memory of the Battle of Ebro, in Gandesa, part of Catalonia in the Tarragona province.

Two essential films that beautifully capture the legacy of the Spanish Civil War are directed by Victor Erice, a decade apart.

"The Spirit of the Beehive" and "El Sur."

Both movies are told through the experiences of a child looking at the world, often through innocent fantasy, intermingling with subtle yet heartbreaking realities of their world.

These two films should be essential viewing for anyone interested in Spain, cinema or humanity.

During the Civil War, most filmmaking came to a halt.

Following the war, Francisco Franco ruled from 1939 to 1975.

In the first decade, there were military tribunals, repression, political purges, and economic hardships.

His mausoleum in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the Valley of the Fallen, is a controversial place and a metaphor for his reign.

During the Franco years, censorship was ripe.

Yet there were filmmakers who managed to make a statement through their movies.

Juan Antonio Bardem, Luis Garcia Berlanga and Carlos Saura all emerged as important voices for Spanish cinema.

What's remarkable is that Spain was a cinema going country.

Going to the movies was a central part of daily life.

From the late 1940s to 50s, Spain had the most theatres per capita in Europe.

At one point, Madrid had 117 cinemas, and citizens went to the movies on average once a week.

While censorship both preceded and followed Franco's reign, censorship was an instrumental part of his governing philosophies, But not until 1963 was there a specific code.

Rather, censorship came in various forms and had to do with the ideologies of Francoism.

Namely those relating to moral decency and Catholic nationalism.

There wasn't just one board or person doing the censorship with clear cut rules.

It was various bodies from the government to the church to the distribution companies.

Each applying their own forms of restrictions or edits into the films.

Both Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis Garcia Berlanga were filmmakers who kept pushing boundaries and made films that mocked the repressiveness of Franco's Spain.

In 1955, Bardem released "Death of a Cyclist," which won at Cannes.

The story centers around an upper class professor and his wealthy mistress, who accidentally hit a cyclist on their drive back from a tryst.

The movie delves into class struggles between the rich and poor and a society obsessed with decadence, leading to corruptions of ethics and morality.

Considering the censors of the time, it's amazing that this film exists.

Yet the ending of the film was changed.

Instead of allowing the adultress mistress to get away with it and go on with her life, as was in Bardem's original ending, the censors changed the plot so that she dies in a car crash.

Berlanga's "The Executioner" is considered a masterpiece of black humor.

A caustic critique on Franco's Spain.

It's a farce about an undertaker who marries an executioner's daughter.

She tricks him into taking on the role of executioner so that they can keep a government allotted apartment.

Berlanga ability to portray likable, empathetic characters that one could easily encounter in Spanish society is possibly one way that his films managed to pass the rather strict censors at the time.

Little seen outside of Spain.

In Spain, Berlanga is considered one of the greats of Spanish cinema.

There's even an adjective attributed to his style of work.

His films are heavy on dialog and feature characters chatting over one another.

Guillem's thesis film from the New York Film Academy "The Dry Rain," holds a special place in my heart.

This is how Guillem and I first met, when he hired me to assistant direct.

A husband grieves over his wife who's trapped in a coma following a car accident.

We jump back and forth from the hospital room, where she is unresponsive to a dream world where the wife in a wedding dress is trying to find her way through the forest to her groom in a tux.

We also see this groom remembering the moments in the car right before the accident, So do it.

The lead actor Pedro Carmo stands out in the film.

I'm biased though.

Pedro is a good friend and we've collaborated on several projects together.

"The Dry Rain" advances some techniques used in Guillem's previous films, playing with time and space, and the themes of mental wellness.

With every film Guillem directs.

You see his storytelling techniques evolve and leads us to where he is today as a successful director of commercials and branded content.

For "The Dry Rain."

I did a crowdfunding campaign because I couldn't pay the film That was the first project that I really developed, like through the last detail.

"The Dry Rain" is about a married couple that, like, gets into a car accident and she gets into a coma.

And they were about to break up in the before the accident happened.

So like we start with this moment of like the couple just like their their paths are starting to drift away he's about to unplug her.

And, and she's also dealing inside of her mind.

He's dealing with the fact that he wants to come back to him, even though she was the one that wanted to get get away from him.

And, and it's about that, like, I mean, about her trying to reach him from from a place that it's not possible.

I took a road trip to visit the hometown of Luis Buñuel, one of my favorite filmmakers and a true gem of world cinema history.

Calanda is a small town in the province of Teruel in Aragon, and one of nine villages that makes up the route of the tambor during Semana Santa.

In Buñuel's memoir, "My Last Sigh," he describes Calanda as being stuck in the Middle Ages until World War I. Born in 1900, Buñuel is a revolutionary filmmaker who led an avant garde surrealism movement, starting with "Un chien andalou, an experimental masterpiece in collaboration with his countryman Salvador Dali.

48 years later, Buñuel directed his last film, "That Obscure Object of Desire."

He won the Oscar for "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and is known for "Los Olvidados," or "The Young and the Damned" "Nazarin" "Viridiana," "The Exterminating Angel," "Diary of a Chambermaid."

and a film that's influenced my work personally, "Belle de Jour" His body of work largely took place in France and Mexico as he fled Franco's Spain.

He survived the Spanish Civil War and worked as a spy in Paris.

He was exiled from Spain and made a film career for himself in his adopted homeland of Mexico.

I geeked out with a tour of a museum dedicated to Buñuel, situated in his childhood home in Calanda.

Nuria.

In 2018, Guillem directed "Nuria" A short horror film washed in greens and reds, This expands well upon the terrifying creepy factor of his previous films.

At first, an innocent first date we are charmed by the characters until it turns out to be our worst blind date nightmare.

Why do you think feminism is such an important topic for you?

Come from the place where I understand a world where A superior one is supposed to be on top of me, like I'm gay and I'm always I've been always told that heterosexuality is like what's supposed to be normal.

At first I wasn't aware of the or or yeah, aware of the sexism in the world.

And then like I had my I had, my first roommates here in Spain, they were two an actress and a friend of mine, and they taught me, like those little things that happened in the world when you're a woman and and that changed to me like that changed to me, the perspective.

Like, I, don't think I've always been a very much so, like, sexist guy, but I've been part of it as a guy.

Like, sometimes you don't mean it, but you are part of it.

And they taught me and they they were very patient with me.

And so they were showing me some stuff that happened to women.

And that was to me like, like I said, like a change of perspective.

well, I want justice more than like, I want equal rights, but I want justice.

And I don't think there's been justice in the history of society.

A prolific filmmaker in Spain who managed to transcend the Franco post-Franco years is Carlos Saura.

He's another remarkable example of a politically dissident filmmaker who managed to pass the censors through cinematic sleight of hand.

His films are often dreamlike, fantastical and, some may even say, bizarre.

Such classics as "Peppermint Frappe" may even be deemed controversial, but he is a voice of a nation, and his post Franco films such as "Los Ojos Vendedos" and "Deprisa, Deprisa" tackled themes of trauma and repression, the psychological effects of living under authoritarianism, and the struggles to transition to a more liberal society.

Some other notable films to come out of the 1980s and 90s still a very transitional period for Spain, are Oscar winner, "Begin the Beguine," the works of Pilar Miro, including "Gary Cooper; que estas en los cielos" "Hablamos Esta Noche," "Werther," and "Prince of Shadows" "Amantes," by Vicente Aranda and Oscar winner "Belle Epoque" by Fernando Trueba Another Oscar winner was the 2004 film starring Javier Bardem, "The Sea Inside," a psychological drama based on the true story of Ramon San Pedro, a merchant ship mechanic who's left paralyzed after a diving accident.

And then there's Almodovar.

Perhaps one of the most famous living directors of today, Pedro Almodovar, born in 1949, in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain is known for his bold colors, quirky art design and social critique through his biting satire, often with over-the-top humor and plot lines.

His films are, in one word, fabulous.

From early works representing a sexual and political freedom coming out of the Franco years, are "Matador," "Law of Desire," and "Tie Me Up Tie Me Down."

While his international breakout film is often considered to be "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown".

both "All About My Mother" and "Talk to Her" earned Academy Awards.

I'm quite fond of "Volver" and more recently, his first English language feature, "The Room Next Door," won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2024.

♪ experimental dissonant music ♪ ♪ experimental dissonant music ♪ At the moment it was a generation generational stuff, like everything that was happening to me, like I was so anxious about getting like, direct directing gigs and like, and I wanted to I, I was feeling very frustrated, and I wanted to know.

I wanted to know why, and I don't know, I thought, okay, let's interview the people around me and talk about like, what's about what is a millennial and what's how.

How is my generation?

How my father, my mom sees my generation, how my friends sees it just to make it sense just to make a sense out of it.

What did you learn?

I think nothing.

No, I learned that, I learned that I was a guy that was not enjoying the moment, and it was like, it was a scary moment for me, like.

And and I think I, I learned to accept those feelings.

And that was my moment.

And I was scared because I didn't know what was going to happen with me or where my life was going.

I guess I learned to accept my my fears.

You're not special like, I'm not a special, and everyone has a different path and everyone has their traumas and their process stuff differently.

And that helped me a lot, like understanding what my mother went through, like some different in some different stages of her life.

I don't know, that helped me a lot too.

I started working in a film production company as a as a how you say, like, intercept or whatever.

So, they needed someone to assist on their marketing campaigns, there are like two different roles there.

Like, there are people who come up with the idea, and there's people who make the filmmaking happen.

But I, I was lucky that I could do both for the company and for them.

That was cheaper.

So I got like, I that's what I do.

Like I just come up with ideas and then I, I direct the film shoot.

How do you then balance your own personal filmmaking work with the commercial work?

I want to live.

And that's.

I mean, right now, you just have to be.

You have to be working to do that.

that's good, but that's also something bad because, like, you give all your passion to it and you give all your energy to it.

And sometimes you don't get like you don't have any left for your own stuff.

And that sometimes pisses me off.

Like I don't get I haven't evolved as fast as I would.

I would like to because of my work.

on the weekends, for example, I try to keep writing my my own stuff, and so I make it happen later, but I try to have something of my own so I don't be just like this kind of robot doing things for a company, One amazing thing about Guillem is that when he's not busy making films, he is training on a national CrossFit team.

Guillem also competes in weightlifting events for the Madrid team.

CrossFit is an international brand leading high intense exercises.

They have CrossFit games where you can compete at high levels and activities such as metabolic conditioning exercises, weightlifting and gymnastics, as well as other athletic activities.

It is hard.

When I visited Guillem in Madrid He and his team were in the process of trying to qualify for a major competition.

Boy, was I impressed.

How do you want me to look?

enough.

In the gay culture here in Spain, like, there's, like a lot of issues with body shaming and all that.

And I started doing sports through the wrong mindset because I started doing it because I wanted to see myself good, like I wanted to see myself in a good space.

and it affects me a lot.

When I was little and I should have, I would have loved myself to be just happy with my body as it was.

And that's something that I would change.

What would I what would I be right now if I were like, just happy with what I had?

even though I'm gonna look stupid right now, I mean, saying this, but that's how I why I started.

And I think it's important to acknowledge that because a lot of people do CrossFit and do sports and stuff because they want to see themselves hot.

Right now, I've learned that that's not what I'm doing with it, and I transform that.

I really like competition.

I like to have better times, better, like lift more weight.

Because, like, I like the power that gives me the confidence that gives me.

No podía más.

Estaba cansada.

¿Egoísta?

Sí.

Ame tu dolor.

You love horror films, right?

I mean, how did that come about?

And what about horror genres makes you excited or whatever about filming?

I've never think about it.

before, but a friend recommended me this book, like, months ago about horror films and the queer world.

Yeah, identity.

I mean, I've been gay, like, since I was born, so.

And to me, I mean, I've never thought about it, but when I read this book, I was like, okay, that something clicked and I was like, okay, maybe that's something.

That's why I liked it, because it's something horror.

It's something that is not like a lot of people say, oh, why do you like horror?

You're so weird.

But there's something about it.

And also the storylines and stuff that I, I don't know, attracts me and I don't know, I like to I mean, I like scary things.

I like dark stuff.

I like to me, horror is a genre that you could you you can play with a lot of stuff there, and you can tell a lot of human things in horror.

I don't know.

I still think it's a genre that's very underrated.

You won't see any awards or something big given to horror movies, and I don't know why.

I'm fascinated by Guillem's attraction to the horror genre.

He loves horror.

I've never been a go-to horror girl, but getting to know the genre through Guillem's point of view has given me a newfound appreciation.

As a youngster, Guillem loved the "Saw" franchise, and in modern times, you can see a rise in horror films coming out of Spain.

Horror films from Spain, that Guillem loves include "The Orphanage," "Veronica," and "The Grandmother," both directed by Paco Plaza.

"The Platform," "Red Lights" and "Time Crimes" I found "Time Crimes" to be especially interesting.

It's a mind fluff, A true time travel film that makes you think twice about daily interactions and the little details that could change if you went back and forth in time.

The main character is a happily married man who discovers a woman undressing in the woods.

His curiosity leads him towards her and his entire life is changed as a result.

He ends up running away from a scary man whose head is wrapped in bandages, only to travel back and forth in time and realize that that man is him, trying to prevent the horrors that occur as a result of time travel.

I found my way to Javier Parra, a film historian, film critic, and book author.

Javier was born in Rebs, Spain, and graduated from the University of Barcelona with a degree in history, and he went on to receive a master's in cinema studies from the University Pompeu Fabra.

He's the author of "Terror en Serie" "La Madre Terrible: en el cine de terror."

about horrible mothers and horror films and Scream Queer, the book that influenced Guillem's own thinking on identity and filmmaking.

I sat down with Javier at Ciutadella Park to discuss his books and his love for horror films.

Como lo que me pasó a mí siendo adolescente, pensando que era una persona diferente, Que estás un poco estás al margen del heteropatriarcado, de lo que supuestamente tienes que ser.

El hecho de sentirte representado en esas películas de monstruos, en ese cine de terror y en esas representaciones que son raras y monstruosas, hace que congenies perfectamente con ese tipo de películas porque asocias eso raro a tu propia, tu propia existencia.

Yo creo que la forma en la que muchos directores queer utilizan el cine, como como una catarsis para hablar, de sus movidas, de lo que ellos creen y de la forma que tienen que crear.

Es una forma bastante interesante de asociarlo.

Yo lo asocio un poco estos creadores a lo que yo podía pensar de esta fascinación hacia el terror y que es un poco en términos generacionales.

Yo hablo con amigos de mi edad y todos pensábamos que cuando estábamos solos en el instituto, metidos en el armario, pensábamos que éramos el único raro.

Entonces yo creo que de ahí hace nace un poco esta sensación, de colectivo.

When I reflect upon the trajectory of cinema in Spain and Guillem and his contemporaries love for horror I wonder if there's a connection between the generations from the end of the Spanish Civil War through Franco to today It's fascinating to me that many of the postwar films that came out or the films I've seen that are depicting life under Franco, or during the war center around life through a child's eyes.

Look at Carlos Saura's "Cria Cuervos" which tells the story through the point of view of a little girl and her siblings who are orphaned after their high military ranked father dies in the middle of a love affair.

Erice's films feature children.

In "The Spirit of the Beehive" I always find the metaphor of the kids at the cinema watching Frankenstein full of wonder to be an interesting entry into their world.

And Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's spin on the Spanish Civil War days "Pan's Labyrinth" is a dark fantasy from a child's point of view.

Del Toro hints at a little horror himself reflecting on a time period full of horrors.

So where does the horror genre come in The war isn't talked about much in Spain Guillem's generation would have only heard about it peripherally and maybe through observing movies full of metaphor and euphemisms It feels like this use of horror is this next generation processing the trauma of their parents and grandparents generation in a medium that is both accessible and highly entertaining.

So you know how much we love you Yeah.

And I love you both.

No you don't No you don't So I have another confession to make.

I really like the movie "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" Call it a guilty pleasure.

What can I say?

Bardem is sexy.

This movie was on my mind as I visited Barcelona and went searching for Gaudi locations.

After all, it was that movie that first introduced me to the famed Catalan architect born in 1852, whose designs were modern beyond his years.

And have continued to influence artist and architects worldwide.

So from Casa Mila where scenes from both Michelangelo Antonioni's, 1975 "The Passenger" and Woody Allen's 2008 "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" were shot.

To Park Guell, where Vicky, played by Rebecca Hall has a chance encounter with Bardem's character, the flirtatious, free-wheeling Juan Antonio To la Sagrada Familia, a Catholic basilica designed by Gaudi that is still being built after 144 years.

What is your dream like idea of your future filmmaker self?

I want to make a living of it.

Like, I just want to be directing things and being to festivals and cultural events and stuff like that and being more like, like an old fashioned director, but for now, in the short term, it's just making one film.

Making your feature.

Yeah, making my feature.

And where when we come back in ten years for 44 or more.

11 years, where do you predict you'll be?

What do you think you'll be doing in 11 years?

I hope that... the ten older version, ten years older version of me, is happy with what he has.

Our time has come to an end.

Far too quickly.

There is so much more Spanish cinema to explore.

One could spend a lifetime watching.

From the early works of Antonio Nieves Conde to the contemporary visions of Carlos Simon, whose films are personal, understated and who says that cinema is a lot like childhood because as children we see everything for the first time.

This latest Cinema Nomad journey was like being a child discovering Spain for the first time.

Even though the country has long held a place in my heart, seeing a place through a cinematic lens changes things.

It provokes us to know more, look deeper and ask questions.

Meeting up with Guillem was also like revisiting a childhood friend whom I haven't seen in a while.

Yet, we never missed a beat.

Even though we were adults when we met, it was like we were children of cinema coming together, exploring, growing and expanding our craft.

I look forward to many more years of collaboration and friendship with Guillem, and I can't wait to see what he accomplishes next.

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