"Director: Julio Medem"

• Room In Rome | DVD | (18/10/2010) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A hotel room in the heart of Rome. Two young women who have only just met travel together on an intimate passionate journey that will mark their bodies and souls deeply. Slowly they allow themselves to be borne away each into the unknown terrain of the other until both find themselves transfixed before a completely new love. The story unfolds over twelve hours through the night and into the early morning before each woman departs Alba to Spain and Natasha to Russia.

• Ma Ma | DVD | (14/11/2016) from £5.99   |  Saving you £16.00 (401.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Penélope Cruz stars in this Spanish drama from film-maker Julio Medem. When unemployed teacher and single mother Magda (Cruz) is diagnosed with breast cancer, she begins to doubt everything around her. While watching her son play football she meets talent scout Arturo (Luis Tosar) who takes a shine to both Magda and her son. When Arturo receives a phone call with news that his wife and daughter have been in a car accident, Magda goes with him to the hospital. As she has told no-one else of her illness, Magda decides to confide in Arturo and the two grow closer, bonding over ill fate. When she discovers that she is pregnant Magda realises that she has something to live for and changes her ways to ensure she is around to see her daughter grow up.

• Sex And Lucia | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £7.99   |  Saving you £14.00 (233.72%)   |  RRP £19.99

  After the loss of her long-time boyfriend Lucia she seeks refuge on a quiet, secluded Mediterranean island. There, bathed in an atmosphere of fresh air and dazzling sun, Lucía begins to discover the dark corners of her past relationship...

• Room In Rome | Blu Ray | (18/10/2010) from £8.99   |  Saving you £14.00 (155.73%)   |  RRP £22.99

  A hotel room in the heart of Rome. Two young women who have only just met travel together on an intimate passionate journey that will mark their bodies and souls deeply. Slowly they allow themselves to be borne away each into the unknown terrain of the other until both find themselves transfixed before a completely new love. The story unfolds over twelve hours through the night and into the early morning before each woman departs Alba to Spain and Natasha to Russia.

• Lovers Of The Arctic Circle | DVD | (05/02/2007) from £8.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (100.11%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Destiny cannot be denied. Lovers of the Arctic Circle is a love story about Otto and Ana stretching from when they were just two kids to the abyss of Finland's arctic circle. The story goes full circle around a fleeting moment: the reflection of Otto's face in Ana's eyes. Renowned for his stunning films The Red Squirrel and Tierra Juilo Medem is a master of the unexpected. In Lovers Of The Arctic Circle Medem has fashioned a truly unique and unusual story of love and destiny told in the alternating voices of the two protagonists; Ana & Otto. The paths of the two lovers first cross at the age of eight when each is running away for different reasons. From that day on destiny chance and coincidence conspire to keep them both together and apart but never out of love. As Otto and Ana discover their feelings for each other they think they have reasons to justify their love but as they get closer they realize that a cyclical dream of chance near-misses and coincidence has brought them together. And their aim? To live together in a part of the world that defies justification and explanation a part of the world where the burning midnight sun makes every day seem endless... on the very edge of the arctic circle. Startling quirky and deeply romantic Lovers Of The Arctic Circle is Medem's most inventive work to date.

• Sex And Lucia | DVD | (28/01/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Julio Medem's daring new film Sex and Lucia begins where his previous film The Lovers of the Arctic Circle left off. The tragic end of Lovers - with the death of Ana just at the moment when she finds love – is now reversed and Lucia's flight is not towards death but towards life. Sex and Lucia embraces vitality through luscious tropical island imagery a well-developed appreciation of the pleasures of the flesh and constant references to water and the life-giving light of the sun. Lucia (Paz Vega) is a waitress who lives and works in Madrid. After what she believes to be the loss of her boyfriend the tortured writer Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa) she flees to a secluded island that he had often told her about. There she meets Carlos (Daniel Freyre) and Elena (Najwa Nimri who played Ana in Lovers) who have also run away to the island to escape personal tragedy.

• The Red Squirrel | DVD | (27/05/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The Red Squirrel sees Jota, an ex-pop star with a penchant for doing nothing very much, standing on a bridge contemplating suicide. He’s pulled back to reality by a dramatic motorcycle accident and goes to help the victim, an attractive young woman apparently physically unscathed but with severe amnesia. At the hospital he is assumed to be her boyfriend, and so the deception begins, as he invents everything from her name (Lisa) through to the details of their imaginary four-year relationship. Though based on a lie, it gradually becomes real but is Lisa really an amnesiac or is she deceiving the deceiver? Who is the mysterious Felix, leaving pleas on a late-night radio programme to his missing, mentally disturbed 25-year-old wife, Sofia? As an array of incidental characters get drawn in, each seems to be practising their own deceit. This is a beautifully wrought, endlessly thought-provoking film, complemented by Alberto Iglesias's fabulous score. The two leads are superb: as Jota, Nancho Nova is both fey and hypnotic while Elisa (Emma Suárez) is wonderfully whimsical. Not surprisingly, it garnered a whole heap of awards, from Best Foreign Film at Cannes to Best Score at the Goya Awards. And the significance of the title? Red squirrels are, apparently, quick and cunning creatures; just like human beings. On the DVD: The Red Squirrel is presented in Dolby Digital original Spanish soundtrack with option of English subtitles and anamorphic widescreen print. The usual stuff is on offer as special features, including trailers for other world cinema films, filmographies of the director and two leading characters, and a concise but considered analysis of the plot.--Harriet Smith

• Lovers Of The Arctic Circle | DVD | (24/07/2000) from £11.12   |  Saving you £8.87 (79.77%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Basque director Julio Medem makes films like no one else's. Quirky, audacious, visually startling, they play teasing games with themes of doubling and fate. Symbolism runs riot, ironies abound, narratives stop dead to focus on seemingly absurd details--and in fact the whole shebang would risk being terminally pretentious were it not for Medem's subversive humour, inviting us into the joke and daring us to take him seriously.Lovers of the Arctic Circle is typical of his idiosyncratic brand of free-wheeling fantasy. In Madrid, two foster-siblings grow up to find themselves gripped by irresistible, quasi-incestuous passion. Flashbacks reaching back to the Spanish Civil War show us how their destinies, those of the parents, and of their parents' lovers, have become entwined. The siblings are parted by circumstance, but seek each other out in Finland's Arctic north. Medem plays sleight-of-hand with doublings and wordplay, cutting deftly between the past, present and future, constantly challenging us to guess where he's heading next in the circling convolutions of his plot. --Philip Kemp

• Vacas | DVD | (24/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  With Vacas, his first feature, the Basque director Julio Medem set out all the elements of his audacious and idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking: intricate, circular plots; richly sensual imagery and highly stylised camerawork; a deft interweaving of fantasy and reality; and a thoroughly subversive attitude to Spanish tradition and folklore. Vacas takes a staple Spanish genre--the epic historical melodrama with all its bombast and macho posturing--and kicks the stuffing out of it while pelting it with cowpats. The action unrolls between two Spanish civil wars--the Second Carlist War of 1874-5, and the rather better-known conflict that started in 1936. An incident in the first of these sets up a feud between two farming families in a Basque valley, and the story leapfrogs down the decades taking in star-crossed lovers, log-chopping contests (a staple Basque competitive sport, it seems), mutilation, madness, incest, photography and any number of cows, through whose placidly bemused gaze we view a good deal of the action. Though Medem is dealing with all the solemn Hemingway-esque elements of romantic Spanishry--honour, blood and death--his approach is too playful to admit any real sense of tragedy. Much of the time the tone is closer to myth, and there's more than a touch of magic realism: axes fly miles through the air, and a tree in the woods can apparently eat people alive. In the end, of course, love triumphs over all. Medem's films have since gained greatly in sophistication and technique, but there's exuberance about this debut work that's irresistible. On the DVD: Vacas on disc has trailers for all five of Medem's features to date; filmographies for Medem and his two lead actors, Emma Suárez and Carmelo Gómez; and useful written notes on the movie by film historian Robert Stone. The transfer's clean and clear, doing justice to Carles Gusi's rich photography, with good sound and in the original ratio. --Philip Kemp

• Basque Ball | DVD | (23/08/2004) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Basque Country: an area of Spain that has one of Europe's oldest cultural identities also a region of continuing conflict and violence. With the formation of its own political party over a century ago it has sought to gain independent recognition. However with the brutal bombing of Guernica by Franco at the start of the Spanish Civil war it has remained determination to fight for independence a situation that remains unresolved to this day. Julio Medem award-winning direc

• The Julio Medem Collection Vol.1 | DVD | (26/02/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Vacas (1992): Director Julio Medem presents a saga spanning over half a century of the twisted goings on between two families in Northern Spain. Carmelo Gomez and Candido Uranga star as the fathers sons and grandsons locked through the ages in an absurdly stubborn and emotionally exhausting conflict. From the Carlist Wars of 1875 to the more famous Spanish Civil War of the thirties Vacas proves that sometimes there seems to be no escape from how family ties dictate our fate. Also starring Ana Torrent Emma Suarez and Pilar Bardem. The Red Squirrel (1992): 'The Red Squirrel' is an anti-macho parable by Spanish director Julio Medem; an intriguing story that draws its characters and audience into a complex game of lies and deceit it demonstrates the director's extraordinary and fresh visual style. Contemplating suicide as he stands against the parapet of a pier one summer night ex-pop star Jota (Nancho Nova) is interrupted by a sudden motorcycle crash. Rushing to the scene he discovers the biker to be a young attractive woman with amnesia (Emma Suarez). Masquerading as her boyfriend he names her Lisa invents a shared history for the two of them and whisks her off on a holiday to the Red Squirrel campsite. Here he reinforces his deception by parading the facade of their long-term relationship in front of other the campers. However it is not long before Jota has to confront the surprising consequences of his lie as there is more to Lisa than meets the eye... A film full of ingenious mesmerising and cryptic images The Red Squirrel made a huge impact at Cannes Film Festival in 1992. Tierra (1996): Angel an exterminator recently released from a mental hospital comes to rid a small Spanish town of tiny grubs in the soil. The local wine-making industry has found these pests responsible for giving their product an ""earthy"" taste that has divided local opinion. While in town Angel becomes involved with two beautiful and very different women and impacts their lives on a grand scale. Can either of these women accept the fact that Angel travels with a ""ghost"" of himself or that he routinely speaks with the deseased townspeople?