Editor

Throughout its 22-year history, the Miami International Film Festival has earned a position as a major US film festival, launching to national prominence such filmmakers as Pedro Almodóvar, Lasse Hallstrom, Fernando Trueba, and Atom Egoyan. Under the leadership of Nicole Guillemet, former co-director of Sundance Film Festival, more than 150 filmmakers, producers, and talent from around the world attended the 2004 Film Festival to introduce their work to industry professionals and Miami audiences. Since the fall of 2003, the Festival has operated from Miami Dade College, a multi-cultural, state-supported college with six campuses and numerous outreach centers, the Festival has a superb organizational base, a strong connection with the community, and direct access to unparalleled intellectual and artistic resources.
Closing Night Party at the Miami International Film Festival: Tango & Tapas
Wachovia Wrap Party
Saturday, Feb. 12 following the screening of Unconscious
The party will continue the setting of the closing night film--Barcelona in the ealry 1900s--toasting the Festival with a night of tapas, tango, and mystery at the beautiful and historic Alred I. Dupont building located directly acrosss from the Gusman Center.

Closing Night Film
Unconscious (Inconscientes)
Spain/Germany/Portugal/Italy, 104 min., 35mm, Color, 2004, Spanish with English subtitles

An uptight doctor and his feminist sister-in-law search for a missing man in a seemingly buttoned-down 1913 Barcelona, but soon discover a lurid world of porn shoots, transvestite parties and even (gasp!) psycho-analysis in this quick-witted Spanish farce about the totems and taboos of the well-dressed repressed. The lovely, modern Alma has a problem: her Freud-obsessed husband has disappeared, and her only help is her brother-in-law, the lamb-chopped but dull Salvador. Ignorant of Wilde, Freud and modernist movements, Salvador distrusts psycho-analysis most of all, a feeling that hardens when he and Alma begin their investigation. Discovering a hidden milieu of role-playing masochists, cross-dressing socialites and illicit heroin parlors bubbling under polite Barcelona society, the two psycho-sleuths also uncover their own repressed desires, and a secret of truly Freudian proportions. Like a Masterpiece Theatre episode written by early Almodóvar, Unconscious revels in digging up the desires and perversions of stuffy costume dramas. Director Joaquín Oristell keeps up the unflagging energy necessary for farce, aided by a cast that remains poker-faced even during the script’s most peculiar moments. As the well-behaved Salvador, Luis Tosar (Mondays in the Sun; The Weakness of the Bolshevik) solidifies his reputation as one of Spain’s greatest actors, while Leonor Walting (My Mother Likes Women) turns Alma into a charming and beautifully neurotic heroine. With detectives like these, the unconscious, and feminist empowerment, Unconscious gives modernity a hilarious twist.

DIRECTOR: Joaquín Oristrell