Rubén Sánchez: ‘Everything possible with A tu vera, my next film where I acquire a maturity as a filmmaker’.

Spanish film director: ‘Culture is what determines the soul, the character, the beauty, the colour, the voice of a whole society’.

Washington -17 DEC 2024.

He has currently shot in his country productions such as Lamento, Joc de Nens, Furias and the latest La Verbena about HIV. In January 2025 he will prepare his first film in English ‘A tu vera’, a story about a group of actors. As the film’s official press release explains, the film seeks to become ‘a catalyst for introspection and self-discovery, testing the bonds of friendship and love’.

It is a heartfelt and moving exploration of personal relationships and the complexities of human connections in one unforgettable night. Aida Quintana, Robin Reese and Gabriel d’Almeida complete the cast of La verbena.

The director of Furias, Rubén Sánchez, finishes shooting his new project, the medium-length film La Verbena. The story features Alex, played by Gabriel D’Almeida, who also stars in another 2019 film, Matthias & Maxime, directed by Xavier Dolan, and Marc (Robin Reese).During a summer night in the city of Barcelona, Alex and his girlfriend Anna (Aida Quintana), organise a get-together with a group of friends at a party.

Marc returns from London just at that moment and unexpectedly runs into Alex, who was a friend of his in England. But what Alex’s girlfriend doesn’t know is that Marc and the father of her future baby are more than friends, and that during their stay in London they had a secret relationship.

This unconfessed homosexuality of Gabriel D’Almeida’s character gives the viewer a sense of uncertainty about the character’s future. He is about to become a father and start a family.

But just when he thought he had done it all, Rubén proves that he was just warming up.His latest project, one of his best works, is a delicate and dazzling love story filmed near his home in Barcelona, with a cast that includes some of his best friends.

La verbena centres on a group of somewhat alternative guys hanging out on the terrace of one of them; Anna (Aida Quintana) recruits Alex (the provocative Gabriel d’Almeida Freitas) and Mark (a vulnerable, lamb-eyed Robin Reese), who are best friends, as leads; she casually mentions to them that there’s a scene where they have to kiss.

In the end, that kiss changes everything, as it makes them question their sexual identity and then their friendship becomes complicated.

Robin Reese y Gabriel d’Almeida.