Resistance Reels
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- Concha Barquero Artés
- Alejandro Alvarado Jódar
- Concha Barquero Artés
- Alejandro Alvarado Jódar
| Resistance Reels | |
|---|---|
 Spanish theatrical release poster | |
| Spanish | Caja de resistencia |
| Portuguese | Caixa de Resistência |
| Directed by |
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| Written by |
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| Narrated by |
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| Cinematography | Raquel Fernández Núñez |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Paloma Peñarrubia |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Nueve Cartas (Spain) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 99 minutes |
| Countries |
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| Languages |
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Resistance Reels[1] (Spanish: Caja de resistencia; Portuguese: Caixa de Resistência) is a 2024 Spanish-Portuguese experimental documentary film written, directed, and narrated by Concha Barquero Artés and Alejandro Alvarado Jódar about the legacy of Fernando Ruiz Vergara.
The plot explores the unfinished projects of Andalusian filmmaker Fernando Ruiz Vergara, the director of Rocío, a documentary film delving on the Francoist repression in Andalusia which was judicially censored in post-Francoist Spain, and which, to this date, still features censorship cuts in the original version.[2]
Production
Release
For its world premiere, Resistance Reels was set to screen at the 69th Valladolid International Film Festival on 19 October 2024.[5] Its festival run also included selections for screenings at the 21st Seville European Film Festival, the international competition section of the 26th Jeonju International Film Festival (for its international premiere), Porto/Post/Doc, and Caminhos do Cinema Português.[1][6][7][4] It was released theatrically in Portugal on 27 March 2025.[8] Distributed by Nueve Cartas,[9] it was released theatrically in Spain on 12 September 2025.
Reception
Paula Arantzazu Ruiz of Cinemanía rated the film 4 out of 5 stars, declaring it "a challenging and hopeful documentary that sheds light like few others on the shadows of our recent history".[9]
Manuel J. Lombardo of Diario de Sevilla gave the film 4 stars, deeming it to be both "faithful to its origins as deliberately free, reflective, and equally combative with regard to the images and discourses of the present".[10]
Elsa Fernández-Santos of El País lamented that "ultimately, the film suffers from too many puns—many of them auditory—that do not add much".[11]
Philipp Engel of La Vanguardia rated the film 5 out of 5 stars, billing it as "an instant classic in terms of its use of archival footage, and undoubtedly one of the films of the year".[12]