Isaki Lacuesta Masterclass

Portrait/Story

Due to some strange inertia, films are still often classified according to thematic and narrative criteria, compartmentalised into genres. If we are going to try out taxonomies, we prefer to play with distorting mirrors and talk about films as if they were literary genres: poetry, essay, story, oral tales, personal diaries . . . 

Films that are portraits, landscapes, still lifes . . .  Films that are songs, operas, ballads, symphonies, jaleo, films in the style of bulerías, alegrías or soleá . . . concert cinema . . .  vinyl records on film or films that dance with architecture.

And within narrative-driven cinema, we are particularly keen to escape the Aristotelian tradition, McKee’s commandments and templates as a whole: as an alternative, let’s explore oral traditions, improvisations, passionate digressions, poetic constraints, and the unstoppable expansion of cinematic experience along narrow streets and up winding paths.

(Isaki Lacuesta)

We never know what Isaki Lacuesta’s next film might look like. In his fifteen feature films and his artistic visual projects, his approach to subjects is never what one initially expects. In this masterclass, he will explore how to break free from traditional narratives and seek inspiration beyond conventional resources, opening up to new forms of aesthetic and emotional experience, where the image merges with other arts.

Isaki Lacuesta (Girona, 1975) studied audiovisual communication at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and earned a Master’s Degree in Creative Documentary from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra before making his first feature film, Cravan vs. Cravan (2002). He has since directed eleven films, alternating between fiction and nonfiction, as well as creating several video pieces and other installations that have been showcased at art centres and festivals worldwide, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which put on a retrospective of his work in 2018. He has regularly worked closely with artists from various disciplines.

Entre dos aguas (2018), in which he revisited the characters from La leyenda del tiempo (2006), won him his his second Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Film Festival (his first was for Los pasos dobles), as well as seven Gaudí Awards, among other accolades. It was the opening film of the 25th edition of l’Alternativa.

Un año, una noche (2022), competed in the official section at the Berlinale and won a Goya for Best Adapted Screenplay. His latest film, Segundo premio, codirected with Pol Rodríguez, won the Golden Biznaga for Best Film at the Málaga Film Festival, as well as awards for Best Director and Best Editor.