Pedro Palacios

Pedro Palacios has this knack for diving into stories that hit you in the gut, you know? He’s not your average filmmaker, and honestly, his work kinda proves it—just look at his lineup. With "El año del descubrimiento" from 2020, he doesn’t just rehash history; he rips it right open, throws you in the middle of the chaos, and lets you sweat it out with the people living through Spain’s industrial collapse in the '90s. You’re not just watching folks lose their jobs—you feel the frustration, the cigarette smoke, the cheap coffee, every bit of that tension simmering under the surface. It’s gritty, but not in a forced way. Feels almost like you’re eavesdropping on something you maybe shouldn’t. Jump back to "Las viudas de Ifni" (2012), and you get a different side of Palacios. He’s got this tenderness for stories that slip through the cracks—like widows left behind after a forgotten colonial war in Morocco. The doc digs into memory, grief, old letters tucked away in drawers, the kind of stuff that never gets a headline but shapes generations anyway. And then, "Afternoons of Solitude" (2024), the latest drop, shows he’s still not running out of steam. This one’s quieter, sure, but it’s not gentle. It’s about people wrestling with loneliness in the age of digital everything—snapshots of lives that look ordinary, until you peer closer and see all the little heartbreaks hiding in plain sight. Palacios doesn’t hand you answers, just messy, raw humanity. That’s his thing.