Rural Women Day

For the first time, the Instituto Cervantes joins the celebration of the International Day of Rural Women, held annually on 15 October, with the screening of two works by director Celia Viada Caso, who has devoted much of her work to portraying women living in rural environments. On our Vimeo channel, viewers will be able to watch her debut feature La calle del Agua and the short film Gregoria, filmed following the warm reception of her first feature.

Celia Viada Caso (Madrid, 1991), trained as a visual anthropologist, clearly demonstrates this background in the way she approaches the protagonists of her films. She uses the tools of non-fiction cinema to take on the challenge of creating portraits that, while retaining a naturalistic essence, transform the stories of these women into powerful cinema. Her documentary work also reveals a thoughtful reading and reinterpretation of elements that explore the female body and territory, which has also led to research using film archives.

This line of work has earned Celia Viada the honour of being the invited filmmaker to develop her documentary film project for the X Films programme at the 2024 Punto de Vista Festival, a project in which she explores the figure of exiled writer María Luisa Elío.