Pervasive use of split screen, a sprawling, relaxed approach to time and a carefully recreated period look – both in costumes and image quality – make the 1992 of The Year of the Discovery (El año del descubrimiento) feel truly unique. Director Luis López Carrasco has a keen interest in history and social change as perceived through the lens of a collective, and in his latest film he reprises and expands on the techniques employed in his debut El Futuro (2013) to shine a spotlight on events in mid-90s Spain that run counter to the historical narrative of progress and prosperity of the time.
Centering around conversations in a bar in Cartagena, where an industrial crisis was taking away jobs and certainties from the local population, Carrasco’s ambitious title draws lines both metaphorical (now versus then, national versus regional) and literal (the screen always split in two to catch more than one side of each discussion) and then proceeds to muddle them in an exploration of what is known and yet still undiscovered. I met with Carrasco in Rotterdam, where The Year of the Discovery left a mark on the main Tiger Competition as one of the most original and significant works of the programme.
