In Robot Dreams, a lonely, friendless dog orders a robot for companionship. When an incident separates the two during their first summer together, the emotional impact is deeply resonant.

Pablo Berger’s 2023 dialogue-free animated film — which premiered at Cannes last year to critical acclaim, won the Goya Award for Best Animated Film, among many others, and was nominated for the 96th Oscars — will open this year’s Película Spanish Film Festival, organized by the Instituto Cervantes Manila.

Loneliness is a universal language that needs no words. Based on Sara Varnon’s 2007 graphic novel, this Spanish-French co-production is set in 1980s New York and explores the nature of platonic friendship through the bond between a clingy dog and a robot vulnerable to rust and decay.

It’s a fitting opening film for the invitational premiere on 5 October, setting the tone for the 23rd edition of the Película Spanish Film Festival, which will run until 13 October. (Robot Dreams will also have a one-time public screening on 22 October).

At a press conference on 24 September at Shangri-La Plaza in Mandaluyong City, the designated venue for the festival, Francisco Javier López Tapia, director of Instituto Cervantes Manila, elaborated on the themes that permeate this year’s films.

“The themes of this year’s festival, and the films we present, focus on diversity, which is something shared by both Filipino and Spanish cultures. Another theme is loneliness,” he explained.

“There are films like Robot Dreams that speak to societies which appear crowded, where people are always surrounded by others, yet at the end of the day, when you return home, you are alone with your own miseries and dramas. I believe that experience is relatable to both Filipinos and Spaniards. So we have films that delve into that,” he added.

This year’s Película will feature 17 full-length films, primarily Spanish, with select entries from Latin America, such as the Argentinean comedy Puan (María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat, 2023), the Brazilian film Pacarrete (Allan Deberton, 2019), and the Panamanian drama Las hijas (Kattia Zúñiga, 2023).

“Roots are also deeply embedded in this festival. We try to showcase Spanish roots through Flamenco and our literature, like the works of Benito Pérez-Galdós…. and Federico García Lorca, one of our most famous poets, who was killed for political reasons.”

Tapia also highlighted that other films explore repression and political struggles during Francisco Franco’s regime, as well as contemporary narratives that link Spain and the Philippines through shared cultural values.

“One of the films, Te Estoy Llamando Lo Carente, Love and Revolution, touches on the LGBT community in the late 1970s, after the death of the dictator. It showcases the explosion of new freedoms and rights that also have a place in the festival,” he noted.