As the evening welcomes the darkness, ‘Scarlet Curtain Falls’ Focus:Spain (Shorts Program 6) aptly describes the collected films. A metaphor for blood or desire, shame or passion, the scarlet curtain drops heavy and abrupt when we see the program as a whole. Like shadows, these works by Spanish filmmakers will linger even after the screening, reminding us that behind every part of our daily life has a fissure waiting to be exposed. This collection of shorts brings us into that fragile space where one’s fear is tested in very creative ways.
 

In ‘The Wicked Game of Ice Cubes’, the routinary rhythms of factory life conceal a storm of obsession. Nerea’s devotion to her boss turns from tender to terrifying, showing how love, when twisted by desperation, can strip away reason. By contrast, ‘The Nest’ pares intimacy down to its most delicate moment: the first night of bringing someone home. What begins with quiet anticipation teeters on the edge of unease. The act of intimacy here will be confronted by an act of protection but it is wise to see the double meaning ahead of the twist. 
 

‘Listen’ takes us into the glittering but ruthless world of the music industry, where a young singer’s long-awaited breakthrough carries with it a price she never imagined. A mysterious gift promises inspiration but demands she surrender part of herself in return, asking how far one will go to keep a dream alive. ‘In A Day in the Countryside’, a seemingly ordinary family trip unfolds like a tableau of social order. Slowly, however, the picture warps, leading its characters toward a place that is anything but pastoral. A story exposing cracks in the façade of class, tradition and authority.
 

Night falls in ‘Night Shift: Wrong Place’, where a junkyard watchman faces more than just another long and lonely shift. The arrival of a killer and his would-be victim turns the scrapyard into a stage for survival, a place where chance and brutality collide. Finally, ‘Set Menu’ wickedly closes the program with dark humor, reminding us that even something as simple as dinner with a friend can spiral into unexpected cost, where a careless joke reshapes the meaning of appetite and consequence. Bon appétit!
 

All six films in ‘Scarlet Curtains Fall’ seem to look like normal encounters but it is the makers and the characters they create that bring menace to the films. Each film pulls at the thin fabric between safety and danger; comedy and cruelty. The Spanish filmmakers make sure that the curtain does not rise again in these tales. It collapses like a final gesture, leaving us in the dark to consider what stays in our memories after the last image fades.