ESCENA Oslo Ibero-Amerikanske Filmdager 2026

ESCENA26 will present 14 films with wide international recognition of great directors and filmmakers from 7 different countries.

This year's edition gathers the most recent award-winning cinema from the region. From the historic 2026 Cannes Film Festival — where three Spanish films competed for the Palme d'Or for the first time in over seventy years — we bring two titles from the Official Competition: THE BELOVED (El ser querido, 2026, Rodrigo Sorogoyen), a searing father-and-daughter drama set on a film shoot, with a towering performance by Javier Bardem; and BITTER JUL (Amarga Navidad, 2026, Pedro Almodóvar), the director's twenty-fourth feature, a melodrama of memory, grief and creative block that speaks directly to his own Dolor y gloria.

Alongside them stand the season's most celebrated new voices: SUNDAYS, (Los Domingos, 2025, Alauda Ruiz de Azúa), winner of the Golden Shell at San Sebastián and the Goya for Best Film; THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO (La misteriosa mirada del flamenco, 2025, Diego Céspedes), a queer western in the Chilean desert that won the top prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes; and SIRÂT (Sirât, 2025, Oliver Laxe), a hypnotic desert road movie awarded the Jury Prize at Cannes.

We turn, too, to intimate stories of childhood, desire and family memory: SIX MONTHS IN A BLUE AND PINK BUILDING (Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul, 2026, Bruno Santamaría Razo), a tender autobiographical hybrid selected for Cannes Critics' Week, set in 1990s Mexico City; and LAST NIGHT I CONQUERED THE CITY OF THEBES (Anoche conquisté Tebas, 2025, Gabriel Azorín), a luminous debut in which a group of young men gather at ancient Roman baths as day turns to confession.

From Argentina, BELEN (Belén, 2025, Dolores Fonzi) dramatizes a real case that galvanized a country, following a young woman imprisoned after a miscarriage and the lawyer who defends her.

The programme reaches deep into questions of land, culture, memory and colonial violence with two documentaries: TOROBORO: THE NAME OF THE PLANTS (Toroboro: El nombre de las Plantas, 2024, Manolo Sarmiento), which returns to the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Waorani people to name thousands of plants threatened with extinction while reckoning with a history of colonization and extraction; and AFTERNOON OF SOLITUDE (Tardes de soledad,2024, Albert Serra), the Golden Shell winner at San Sebastián, an immersive portrait of Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey. From Portugal, NIGHT PASSENGERS (Entroncamento, 2025, Pedro Cabeleira), which premiered at Cannes, offers a raw portrait of a stalled youth in a railway town.

As part of our celebration, we mark the 25th anniversary of two turn-of-the-millennium classics that helped define a golden era of Latin American cinema, both released in 2001: SON OF THE BRIDE (El hijo de la novia, Juan José Campanella), the Oscar-nominated Argentine tale of love, memory and second chances, and AND YOUR MOTHER TOO / OG MORA DI OGSÅ (Y tu mamá también, Alfonso Cuarón), the Mexican road movie whose screenplay earned an Academy Award nomination.

And in a singular event, we present ¡QUE VIVA MEXICO!, Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished silent masterpiece — a tableau of Mexican life — screened with a new soundtrack performed live in the cinema by Mexican composer Rodrigo Sigal.

The festival will once again be enriched by presentations by filmmakers: a screening of THE BELOVED, introduced by screenwriter Isabel Peña, and a screening of and LAST NIGHT I CONQUERED THE CITY OF THEBES, introduced by its director, Gabriel Azorín.

About the festival:

ESCENA. Oslo Ibero-amerikanske filmdager is a platform for cultural exchange between Norway and the Ibero-American region.

The aim of the festival is to promote the interest in film from the Spanish and Portuguese speaking nations of Europe and the Americas and showcase the vibrant film expressions of these nations.

The films convey social, political, and historical aspects of this cultural context as well as the challenges currently facing the societies of the region. Even though these nations share a common cultural mainstream; they form a rich tapestry of diverse backgrounds that translate into their cinematic expression.

ESCENA also provides a gathering place and discussion forum for film enthusiasts, for those with roots in the region and others who have an interest in Ibero-America.