One of the highly anticipated film festivals in the country is just around the corner which is why we’ve prepared this Spanish Film Festival guide to help you plot your schedule.
The 25th edition of PELÍCULA>PELIKULA, the Manila Spanish Film Festival begins October 4 and will run until October 11, 2026. Presented by Instituto Cervantes de Manila, in collaboration with the Embassy of Spain, AECID Cultura, and other institutions, the much awaited film fest will showcase 23 acclaimed movies from Spain, Latin America and the Philippines.
To kickstart the festival, a special four-film marathon, La Previa, will happen on Sunday, October 4, at Instituto Cervantes in Intramuros. The main program will happen on October 5 at Power Plan Cinema 2 and will run for an entire week.
All screenings are free.
Check out the movie schedule when you scroll down the page. Also, you can click on each movie poster below to see more details about each film.
PREMIOS GOYA ON TOUR
This is a special section that features seven movies that have recentlhy received awards. This is in collaboration with the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España.
ENCUENTROS EN EL CINE: EN CORTO - SHORT FILM PROGRAM
The Short Film section reflects the festival’s core objectives of strenghtening cultural ties between the Philippines and the Spanish-speaking world. This year, five short films from the Philippines, Spain, and Latin America are showcased.
These will be screened on October 11 at 5:00 PM.
Venues: Oct 4 at Instituto Cervantes, Intramuros. Oct 5–11 at Power Plant Cinema 2, Rockwell, Makati.
All screenings are free. Schedule is based on the festival’s official calendar and may change. Check the festival’s pages before heading out.
Giants of La Mancha
Gigantes | 2024 · Argentina, Spain, Germany | Animation, 88 min
Director: Gonzalo Gutiérrez
Voice cast: Karol Sevilla, Carla Peterson, Micke Moreno, Facundo Reyes
Logline: When violent storms threaten his village in La Mancha, an imaginative boy convinced he is Don Quixote’s heir rallies his friends to face the giant he believes is behind them.
L’Olivia i el terratrèmol invisible
Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake | 2025 · Spain, France, Belgium, Chile, Switzerland | Animation, 71 min
Screenings: Oct 4 · 12:30 PM; Oct 11 · 2:00 PM
Director: Irene Iborra Rizo
Voice cast: Celia Sol, Hug Mont, Sílvia Vilarrasa
Logline: When her family is evicted in Barcelona, 12-year-old Olivia tells her little brother it’s all part of a movie they’re making, turning their upheaval into a story they can survive together.
Mensaje en una botella
Message in a Bottle | 2025 · Argentina | Comedy, 126 min
Screenings: Oct 4 · 2:00 PM; Oct 9 · 9:45 PM
Director: Gabriel Nesci
Cast: Luisana Lopilato, Benjamín Vicuña, Benjamín Amadeo, Marina Bellati, Rafael Spregelburd
Logline: A sommelier discovers that messages hidden in vintage wine bottles can rewrite her past, but every attempt to fix her life traps her in a messier present.
Mariposas Negras
Black Butterflies | 2024 · Spain | Animation, 78 min
Screenings: Oct 4 · 4:30 PM; Oct 10 · 2:00 PM
Director: David Baute
Cast: Laura Gomez, Bella Agossou, Miranda Gas, David Comrie
Logline: Three women in Kenya, the Caribbean and India are forced from their homes by drought, hurricanes and floods, in an animated portrait of the people displaced by climate change.
Rondallas
Band Together | 2025 · Spain | Drama, 112 min
Screenings: Oct 5 · 2:00 PM
Director: Daniel Sánchez Arévalo
Cast: Javier Gutiérrez, María Vázquez, Judith Fernández, Tamar Novas, Carlos Blanco
Logline: After a tragedy at sea, a Galician fishing village revives its rondalla, the town’s traditional string band, to compete against neighbouring villages and learn to heal together.
La cena
The Dinner | 2025 · Spain | Historical drama, Comedy, 104 min
Screenings: Oct 5 · 5:00 PM; Oct 10 · 7:30 PM
Director: Manuel Gómez Pereira
Cast: Mario Casas, Alberto San Juan, Asier Etxeandia, Nora Hernández, Elvira Mínguez
Logline: Madrid, 1939: two weeks after the Civil War ends, Franco orders a victory banquet at the Hotel Palace, and the only cooks available are Republican prisoners with plans of their own.
El cautivo
The Captive | 2025 · Spain, Italy | Historical drama, 134 min
Screenings: Oct 5 · 7:30 PM; Oct 9 · 5:00 PM
Director: Alejandro Amenábar
Cast: Julio Peña Fernández, Alessandro Borghi, Miguel Rellán, Fernando Tejero
Logline: Held captive in Algiers in 1575, a young Miguel de Cervantes plots escape after escape, and discovers that storytelling may be his only way to survive.
El desencanto
The Disenchantment | 1976 · Spain | Documentary, 97 min
Screenings: Oct 6 · 2:00 PM
Director: Jaime Chávarri
Featuring: Felicidad Blanc, Juan Luis Panero, Leopoldo María Panero, Michi Panero
Logline: Twelve years after the death of poet Leopoldo Panero, his widow and three sons pick apart the family myth in a landmark documentary filmed as Franco’s Spain came to an end.
The Room Next Door
La habitación de al lado | 2024 · Spain | Drama, 104 min
Screenings: Oct 6 · 5:00 PM
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola
Logline: A war correspondent facing terminal cancer asks an old friend she hasn’t seen in years for one last favor: to stay in the room next door at the end of her life.
Maspalomas
2025 · Spain | Drama, 115 min
Screenings: Oct 6 · 7:30 PM
Director: Jose Mari Goenaga & Aitor Arregi
Cast: Jose Ramon Soroiz, Nagore Aranburu, Kandido Uranga
Logline: A 76-year-old man living openly as gay in Maspalomas suffers an unexpected accident and must move back to San Sebastián, where he is tempted to step back into the closet at his care home.
Los Domingos
Sundays | 2025 · Spain | Drama, 110 min
Screenings: Oct 7 · 2:00 PM; Oct 10 · 5:00 PM
Director: Alauda Ruiz de Azúa
Cast: Blanca Soroa, Patricia López Arnaiz, Miguel Garcés, Juan Minujín, Mabel Rivera
Logline: Seventeen-year-old Ainara stuns her family when she announces she wants to become a cloistered nun, and her aunt sets out to stop her.
Tengo Sueños Eléctricos
I Have Electric Dreams | 2022 · Costa Rica, Belgium, France | Drama, 102 min
Screenings: Oct 7 · 5:00 PM
Director: Valentina Maurel
Cast: Daniela Marín Navarro, Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez, Vivian Rodríguez
Logline: After her parents split, 16-year-old Eva chooses to live with her volatile, poetry-writing father, and their bond swings between tenderness and violence.
Vino La Noche
Night Has Come | 2025 · Peru, Mexico, Spain | Documentary, 96 min
Screenings: Oct 7 · 7:30 PM
Director: Paolo Tizón
Featuring: Young recruits of the Peruvian Army
Logline: Young recruits train to become elite commandos bound for Peru’s most dangerous conflict zone, and inside the brutal routine, unexpected tenderness takes hold.
Laponia
Welcome to Lapland | 2025 · Spain | Comedy, 89 min
Screenings: Oct 8 · 2:00 PM
Director: David Serrano
Cast: Natalia Verbeke, Julián López, Ángela Cervantes, Vebjørn Enger
Logline: Two sisters’ families gather for Christmas in Lapland, until one child tells her cousin that Santa Claus isn’t real and the holiday turns into all-out family war.
Cyclone
2025 · Brazil | Drama, 100 min
Screenings: Oct 8 · 5:00 PM
Director: Flávia Castro
Cast: Luiza Mariani, Eduardo Moscovis, Karine Teles, Magali Biff
Logline: São Paulo, 1918: a free-spirited playwright nicknamed Cyclone wins a scholarship to study theatre in Paris, but an unwanted pregnancy and a controlling director stand in her way.
Sirāt
2025 · Spain, France | Drama, 104 min
Screenings: Oct 8 · 7:30 PM
Director: Oliver Laxe
Cast: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Stefania Gadda, Richard Bellamy, Jade Oukid
Logline: A man and his young son scour the desert raves of Morocco for his missing daughter, then follow a band of ravers deeper into the sand as the world tips toward war.
We the Hispanos
2026 · Spain | Documentary, 118 min
Screenings: Oct 9 · 2:00 PM
Director: José Luis López-Linares
Featuring: Historians and experts, mostly from the US
Logline: A documentary tracing three centuries of Spanish influence on the United States, from explorers and missions to the architecture, art and music that still shape the country.
Los Tigres
The Tigers | 2025 · Spain, France | Thriller, 109 min
Screenings: Oct 9 · 7:30 PM
Director: Alberto Rodríguez
Cast: Antonio de la Torre, Bárbara Lennie, Joaquín Núñez
Logline: Two siblings who work as industrial divers in the port of Huelva find cocaine hidden in a cargo ship’s hull, and a way out of their money troubles that could sink them both.
¡Abre las piernas!
Spread Your Legs! (Spain, Mexico, Switzerland · 2025)
Screenings: Oct 11 · 5:00 PM
Director: Águeda V. Flores
Paula, a martial-arts lover, is stuck with an insensitive, very strange gynaecologist.
Agapito
(Philippines · 2025)
Screenings: Oct 11 · 5:00 PM
Director:Arvin Belarmino & Kyla Danelle Romero
A night with the pinsetters of a duckpin bowling alley. Cannes Short Film Palme d’Or competition.
Elenita Elena Elaine
(Philippines · 2025)
Screening: Oct 11 · 7:00 PM
Director: Gabriela Serrano
In a near-future Manila where dreaming is outsourced, a mother and daughter say goodbye before she leaves to work abroad.
Gilbert
(Spain · 2024)
Screening: Oct 11 · 5:00 PM
Directors: Arturo Lacal, Alex Salu & Jordi Jiménez
An island gondolier decides to keep a package meant for his neighbour Sullivan. Goya for Best Animated Short.
Voz de Trompeta
(Chile · 2023)
Screening: Oct 11 · 5:00 PM
Directors:Pilar Smoje & David Monarte
- A wordless jazz animation following a trumpeter’s surreal journey toward inner peace.
PELÍCULA>PELIKULA 2026 is a project of Instituto Cervantes de Manila, the Embassy of Spain in the Philippines, and AECID Philippines, in collaboration with the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España, the Film Development Council of the Philippines, the Film Academy of the Philippines, the National Book Development Board, Intramuros Administration, QCinema, Quezon City Screen Commission (Screen QC), the Embassy of Argentina in the Philippines, the Embassy of Brazil in the Philippines, the Embassy of Chile in the Philippines, the Embassy of Peru in the Philippines, Power Plant Cinema, Ayala Museum, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Mapúa University, MINT College, CIIT, FEU Manila – Institute of Arts and Sciences, UP Diliman Department of European Languages, UP Círculo Hispánico, UP Film Institute, the UST Department of Modern Languages, and SOFA Design Institute.
The Festival is sponsored by Acciona, Boysen, and Fundador.
For more information about the festival, visit their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1060389459705609