It’s always a downer to see movies that are good, even very good, They go through the billboard without penalty or glory. Some, even when they are from very powerful directors or are preceded by good reviews or a good reception at festivals. It is a downer to intuit the superhuman work behind the smaller and more limited releases. And it’s a downer to see how these films have little to do, even nothing, compared to the one that kidnaps the box office or the two that share it (today, with a lot of effort) every week. There is nothing to remedy that: It doesn’t matter if the media has highlighted them, if the critics have applauded them or if they have made noise in networks. Somehow it has always been like this, but it is undeniable that the new rules of the game have made the passage through the theaters of many of these films more discreet and silent than ever. These same rules of the game, at least the most optimistic ones, also say that you have to relax, that nothing happens, that films do not die in theaters, that there is a new life waiting for them on the platforms.
And yes, sometimes it is. But, although many films remain there for us to recover them in another way later (not all of them), it is between ridiculous and unfair to believe that for all of them their passage through theaters is nothing more than a simple procedure to become a ‘hit’ when land on platforms or to have a better life on them. I suppose that it is something uncontrollable, that there is nothing to do at a time when two things coincide: a brutal offer and the evidence that, to this day, spectators do not flock to theaters. But, precisely for that reason, it is still the moment when we should be more on top of what arrives in theaters. This week, the reminder of the importance of keeping an eye on (other) theatrical releases could have come to me with several titles that have just been released or will be released soon, and despite their indisputable value, it is difficult for them to sweep the box office. But it has come to me ‘Camila is going out tonight’, an extraordinary film that opens in the center of Barcelona in a single cinema (Cinema Maldà) and with a single daily screening. I take this opportunity to claim it. Such a premiere should not go unnoticed, even less so in 2022, because it is a film totally connected with the times. The Argentine director Inés María Barrionuevo starts with the story of Camila, a teenager who has to move from La Plata to Buenos Aires and enter a religious schoolto approach with a wonderful mixture of naturalness, lucidity, combativeness and tenderness all the issues that matter to us. It speaks of the contrast between an old and conservative world and a new world, of generational and class differences, of different types of abuse, of the right to decide on one’s own body and on the life we want to lead, of feminism, of structural injustices that will be difficult to strike down… It is a film that deserves to be in more theaters and grow with something that doesn’t even exist anymore: word of mouth. But neither is nor will it be so and it is a shame. For this reason, more than ever, we must be aware of these other premieres so that they do not go unnoticed.