Avis des critiques

The split-screen, far from just a way to multiply stories, creates a vital dynamic that embodies differences as well as affinities, shared hopes and disappointments, unarticulated links between the past and the present, as well as a sense of fading traditions in the wake of cultural upheaval.

Luis López Carrasco’s dense, devious El año del descubrimiento confirms his reputation as Spain’s foremost audiovisual chronicler of the country’s recent past, albeit one for whom marginal positions, materiality, everyday chitchat, and the liberating effects of fiction are as, if not more, important than grand historical events.

No mere stylistic flex, The Year of Discovery is a vital example of cinema’s capacity to rescue memory from the clutches of history.

An ambitious, mammoth 200-minute interrogation of recent Spanish industrial, social and economic history seen through the prism of one coastal city, the naval base Cartagena.