Garbo: The Spy

And on Day 124, during a quick trip to Seattle, I managed to catch the Goya-award winning documentary Garbo, el espía, shown as part of the Third Annual Festival of New Spanish Cinema, (coming to a theater near you if you're lucky enough to live in New York, Portland, San Juan, Houston, Miami, Chicago, DC or Calgary).  This film is a captivating example of how far Spanish documentary filmmaking has come in the last decade.  Although the film's producer is Edmon Roch, a Catalan filmmaker who founded the Barcelona-based production company Ikiru Films, and it's billed as a Spanish documentary, Garbo is a prime example of transnational cinema.¹ The fact that Roch worked on Whit Stillman films and directed a series for Spanish television doesn't hurt his international cred, either.

In a blend of English, Spanish and Catalan, Garbo tells the story of a Catalan double agent during World War II who had an out-sized impact on the course of history.  It's a fascinating story, told with an engaging blend of snippets of old spy movies, interviews with scholars and historians, and filmstrips and home movies of pre-war Barcelona and post-war Venezuela.  Watch the preview here.

¹ What's transnational cinema, you ask? My article "Filming the (Trans)Nation: Spain and Mexico in Guillermo del Toro’s Cinema" currently under careful review at Journal X, will answer all your questions.  Someday.