Screening of Cenizas (2014) by Carlos Balbuena

CENIZAS [Ashes] (2014)

Direction, production, script, editing and photography (with Marta Ayuso): Carlos Balbuena. Character: Jorge Tejerina. Music: Sergio Lasuen. Films 59, Spain, 2014. 60 min. VOE.

The premiere of Carles Balbuena's first feature on the Auteur Film Festival (D'A) of Barcelona in 2014 was a first class discovery to the point that, since then, the most important festivals of independent cinema in the world not have ceased to dispute his work. Born in the mining area of ​​Leon, Balbuena invents a character conceived as a kind of alter ego, who returns to the basin to check that there is nothing more that perhaps some ashes, the same floating at the mines. Cenizas draws a reflection on the course of time and nature of memories, but also about the way we have been substracted of childhood landscapes to build a new civilization mirage. It really is one of the main Spanish films of the year: rigorous, consistent and honest. It is both a cinematic lesson, since the void which rises in turn reveals the absence of the major figures of cinema, from the old genres. Cenizas can also show perfectly what remains of the western.

Carlos Losilla