EL BOLA - PELLET

• Winner: Best Film, Best New Actor, Best New Director, Best Screenplay – Goya Awards
• Winner European Discovery of the Year, European Film Awards
• Winner OCIC Award, San Sebastian International Film Festival
• Winner Best Film, Avignon Film Festival
• Winner Best Film, Bogota International Film Festival

Pablo (El Bola) is a 12-year old boy raised in a violent and unforgiving environment. Embarrassed by his family life, he retreats from his classmates, engaging them only through a dangerous game. The arrival of a new boy at school, from whom he learns a new definition of friendship, leads to the discovery of a family where communication and love prevail over domination and violence.

The film poignantly parallels the lives of a caring father unable to connect with his willful son, and that of distant Pablo (El Bola) and his abusive father who is incapable of giving him the love he needs, replacing it with something far more sinister. One imprints his son in an improbably gentle manner with a tattoo stylus, the other brutally with his fists. Told through both the childrens’ and adults’ points of view, Achero Mañas’s El Bola is a stirring narrative that lodges in the memory.

Admission 18+
Tickets: $14, $11 (concession)
on sale at ACMI Box office: 8663 2583 or online at: www.acmi.net.au/tickets

Program Info: filmotecamelbourne [at] gmail.com

Founded in 1999, Melbourne Filmoteca is an independent, non-profit, volunteer-run group which aims to provide a space for people with a broad range of interests and backgrounds to learn about and appreciate not only film, video and screen culture from the regions, but also the language, music and cultures of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking world. Melbourne Filmoteca @ ACMI screenings are presented by Melbourne Filmoteca in partnership with ACMI Cinemas, Australian Centre for the Moving Image