The Boundaries Between Genres at D’A Barcelona

At the latest edition of D’A Barcelona, several filmmakers moved fluidly across genre conventions, blending auteur cinema with elements of horror, thriller, and science fiction to explore contemporary anxieties and narrative experimentation. Spanish film critic Javier Parra examines how these works increasingly blur the boundaries between auteur cinema and genre, moving across horror, thriller, and speculative forms to interrogate contemporary concerns.

Every year, Barcelona opens a door to some of the most compelling highlights of international auteur cinema. In this latest edition of D’A, the programme offered a concise diagnostic of how filmmakers—working from an auteurist perspective—are increasingly turning toward genre cinema, from the fantastic to science fiction and even horror.

As part of the Direcciones section, Radu Muntean surprised audiences with Index, a film that shifts from contemplative realism into horror with survivalist undertones. An ornithologist working alone in the Romanian woods encounters a wild child who could easily belong to the realm of exploitation cinema, destabilising the film’s initially grounded register.

Meanwhile, Argentine filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler presented Las corrientes, starring Isabel Aimé González-Sola as the protagonist of what could be described as a “house of psychotic women”—a notion theorised by critic Kier-La Janisse. The film follows a woman undergoing a mental breakdown at the peak of her career, blurring psychological drama with genre-inflected unease.

Another hybrid work was Joan Porcel’s La carn, featured in the Un Impulso Colectivo section. Starring Lluís Garau, who also co-wrote the script, the film operates as a meta-fictional exploration of loneliness and the commodification of the male body. Set within the digital “meat market” of platforms such as Chatroulette, it interrogates validation and exposure. This physical and emotional nakedness gradually morphs into a voyeuristic narrative reminiscent of 1980s thrillers—evoking, at times, the aesthetics of Italian exploitation cinema filtered through echoes of early Brian De Palma. While its looping structure risks narrative stagnation, the film’s descent into repetition can also be read as a critique of infinite scrolling culture, where identity is endlessly refracted and performed.

In the Talents section, three films further explored genre permeability. Marta Bergman’s L’Enfant Bélier, inspired by a real case in Belgium, begins as a social drama about a family attempting to cross a border, before transforming into a high-intensity thriller during a highway chase. However, its social commentary ultimately lacks cohesion. By contrast, Affection Affection by Alexia Walther and Maxime Matray resists the suspense inherent in its premise—a young woman’s disappearance in a Riviera town—opting instead for a meditation on absence and communal disconnection. Its tonal oscillation suggests a curious blend of David Lynch’s surrealism and the narrative detachment of L’Avventura.

The most striking entry emerged from Poland: Kingdom by Michał Ciechomski, winner of the D’A 2026 Talents Award. Set in an indeterminate yet disturbingly plausible future, the film portrays a paramilitary group navigating a collapsing social order. Their world—scored as much by hardcore music as by unexpected pop references—reveals a volatile mix of camaraderie, aggression, and suppressed desire. Aesthetically and narratively bold, the film recalls the confrontational energy of Gaspar Noé, while articulating a pointed critique of rising homophobia and far-right ideology. Its divisive reception in Poland only underscores the urgency of its provocation.

Javier Parra
Edited by José Teodoro
©FIPRESCI 2026