WINNER Best New Director, Best Supporting Actress, Goya Awards 2019

NOMINATED Golden Camera, Queer Palm, Cannes Film Festival 2018

 

Lola (Zaira Romero) and Carmen (Rosy Rodríguez), live on the outskirts of Madrid in a poor and fiercely Catholic gypsy community where a woman must marry very young, have children and wait upon her man until death do them part. It is at the local open-air market that the two girls first lock eyes, detonating an explosion of first love. This meeting opens the floodgates to what will prove a journey replete with as much unbridled emotion as repression. As their relationship unfolds with purity, innocence and intensity, Carmen and Lola will have to battle against a community that is determined to tear them apart with its strict traditions.

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Bilbao-born writer-director Arantxa Echevarría is no stranger to documentaries, an attribute that makes her feature-length fiction debut feel both authentic and urgent. Fully immersing the audience in an unfamiliar environment replete with terrific performances featuring flamenco- Roma style music, Echevarría and her exceptional non-professional cast deliver an empathetic depiction of forbidden love in a repressive society. Carmen and Lola is inspiring, necessary and beautiful.