Retueyos 2025: A Journey Through Personal, Authentic Visions in Independent Cinema
The Retueyos Section of the Gijón International Film Festival (FICX) has set itself the task of exploring today the direction in which cinema will develop in the coming years. As the FIPRESCI jury at the 63rd edition of the Festival, we had the task of watching the thirteen films in the official competition, discussing them, and finally awarding one of them the FIPRESCI Prize—no easy task, given the many good ideas, fresh perspectives, and emerging talents featured in the program.
Our journey began with Brother Verses Brother (2025) by Ari Gold, a radically personal musical odyssey through San Francisco. Inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s concept of live cinema, the film offers a touching glimpse into the lives of brothers Ari and Ethan Gold, who play versions of themselves in the film.
Magic Farm (2025) by Amalia Ulman follows a US film crew on a trip to Argentina in search of new trends. But sloppy communication leads them to arrive at a different location than their intended destination. Against the backdrop of internal quarrels and an environmental disaster caused by the globally operating crop science industry, the film develops from a sensationalist satire into something of greater depth; connections with the local population give rise to new relationships in which the locals prove themselves superior to the digital neocolonialists in some respects. The film received the Youth Jury Award.
There is a lot of traveling, albeit at a rather uneventful pace, in Sugarland (2025) too, the first feature film by Austrian author and director Isabella Brunäcker. Filmed largely in and from a car, it depicts a couple brought together by chance who grow closer to each other and the viewer than expected—yet still keep some secrets to themselves until the very end. We awarded Sugarland the Retueyos Jury Special Prize (without FIPRESCI certificate).
A young model dreaming of a career in China and a painter who works in a morgue and captures his autopsy experiences in paintings are the protagonists that Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter observe with great calm in White Snail (2025), an Austrian-German co-production set in Belarus. Although their characters were developed in a documentary style, White Snail contains moments of great magic.
Ivana Mladenovic’s Sorella di Clausura (2025) takes the audience to a Romania plagued by various problems and asks whether perhaps the entire universe should come to the aid of those who wish for something with all their heart. The turbulent and chaotic comedy received the CIMA Award for the first feature film directed by a woman.
In Caravan (Karavan, 2025) by Zuzana Kirchnerová, we travel to southern Italy with the protagonist Ester and her son David, whose behavior is determined by his Down syndrome and autism. When a traveler joins them, the close mother-son relationship expands into a trio for a time. New experiences open up their emotional worlds, but also lead to new conflicts.
With Skiff (2025), we got to see the outstanding movie of the competition. The second feature-length film by Belgian director Cecilia Verheyden tells a coming-of-age story that is entirely devoted to the uncertainty of physical conditions and friendships and family relationships. In addition to great narrative excellence and magnificent visual ideas, it is characterized above all by the face of the young actress Femke Vanhove, whose expressiveness is sure to attract a lot of attention in the cinema in the coming years.
In Marcos M. Merino’s documentary Plaza Mayor (2025), the Retueyos journey then stops off in the festival city of Gijón. Using archive material and his own images of the city’s main square, accompanied by a polyphonic voice-over, he paints a portrait of Gijón, its inhabitants, and the region as it was and how it is changing. Using its material, the film also questions the conditions of memory itself and its connection to place.
Follies (Folichonneries, 2025) is set in a large Canadian city. Director and co-author Eric K. Boulianne tells of the difficulties of asserting oneself as lovers and parents in a world where the promises of polyamory and sexual escapism are not only tempting, but seem to determine one’s own happiness and self-esteem in general.
Set in the Serbian countryside, Wind, Talk to Me (Vetre, pričaj sa mnom, 2025) by Stefan Djordjević, featuring members of the filmmaker’s family, calmly depicts a mother-son relationship, focusing on the surrounding nature and its forces.
With engaging actresses, precise direction, and magnificent use of music, Alice Douard’s feature film debut Love Letters (Des preuves d’amour, 2025) tells of motherhood in its many facets and the obstacles that a medieval-seeming legal system places in the way of same-sex couples, even in Paris, which considers itself at the height of civilization. The film received the Premio EUROPA FILM FESTIVALS – Europa Joven, one of the festival’s audience awards.
Also set in France is Stereo Girls (Les Immortelles, 2025) by Caroline Deruas Peano. It tells the enthusiastic story of the friendship between two inseparable 17-year-old schoolgirls who dream of a career in music in the big city. But a tragedy puts an end to their dreams and forces one of the protagonists to find a way to keep them alive on her own.
With A Light That Never Goes Out (Jossain on valo joka ei sammu, 2025) by Lauri-Matti Parppei, the journey through current young cinema finally ends in a small Finnish town. Following a breakdown, it’s here where a rising star of the classical music scene unexpectedly finds new friendships and a radically different artistic approach than before.
The Retueyos competition at the 63rd edition of the Gijón Film Festival stood out for its selection of films that, despite their great artistic diversity, focus on the current conflicts of real people in authentic contexts. This approach by the program makers in putting together the lineup makes Gijón a place where important voices of an emerging auteur cinema can be discovered early on. For the filmmakers, it means the opportunity to connect with an interested audience.
Holger Heiland
©FIPRESCI 2025