World Cup 2010: Spains 10 Best Films

Timecrimes (2007)

The Film: A dark and tightly plotted time-travelling thriller, with a pleasingly downbeat touch. A middle-aged nobody stumbles into a time loop and finds himself making mistakes he struggles to fix.

Bad Education (2004)

The Film: A twisting trawl through the twin lives of two Catholic schoolboys, who grow through sexual awakening and abuse, before meeting again as adults having become very different people.

The Others (2001)

The Film: Ghostly English language thriller starring Nicole Kidman and directed by Spanish helmer Alejandro Amenábar. Kidman’s young mother looks after her two children in her cold, haunted stately home, while awaiting the return of her soldier husband.

REC (2007)

The Film: A shaky, violent stab of horror, which tells the handicam story of an apartment building in lockdown following the outbreak of what appears to be a deadly virus.

Open Your Eyes (1997)

The Film: Dizzying, dramatic sci-fi about loss and love, starring Penélope Cruz in the same role she would play in the Hollywood remake, Vanilla Sky.

Lovers Of The Arctic Circle (1998)

The Film: Julio Médem’s fractured, circular look at love and coincidences as told through the lives of two life-long lovers and friends. It is a grand romance, a bond that bends fate and connects these lives from one end to the other.

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

The Film: Co-created by Spain’s premier surrealist duo Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, this 16-minute short is a burst of freeform images and disturbing avante garde juxtaposition.

All About My Mother (1999)

The Film: Pedro Almodovar’s beautiful, big-hearted and overbearing drama about love, death and motherhood, featuring a woman who goes on a journey through her past following the death of her young son.

The Orphanage (2007)

The Film: Expertly creepy chiller about a young couple with an adopted son who return to the orphanage where she grew up, only to be plagued by a phantom child wearing a Hessian mask.

Pans Labyrinth (2006)

The Film: Mexican Guillermo Del Toro’s dark blend of grim Spanish Civil War realism with frightening flight of fancy, as a young girl caught in the conflict escapes to a dangerous fantasy world.