Amsterdam Spanish Film Festival 2026: 10 Films to Watch

There is a particular pleasure in watching a film you know nothing about, in a cinema that demands your full attention. The Amsterdam Spanish Film Festival 2026 runs from 10 to 19 April across three of the city's most distinctive screens, Tuschinski, EYE Filmmuseum, and LAB111, and this year's programme is strong enough to warrant clearing your calendar. Goya winners, a Venice world premiere, and a new section dedicated to Latin American political cinema all feature in a 10-day programme that goes well beyond the expected.

We've gone through the full lineup and selected 10 films across three programme sections: the Opening Night double bill, the CORE programme of Spain's best recent work, and the Latin Pride section spotlighting urgent stories from across the Americas. Explore this festival on Outhere and discover more film events, cultural festivals, and screenings happening across the Netherlands and beyond.

ASFF 2026 opens on 10 April with a double bill that sets the festival's tone: two films rooted in music, both asking what it means to carry a tradition forward. It is a confident, emotionally charged way to start 10 days of Spanish-language cinema.

Winner of the 2026 Goya Award for Best Documentary, this is an intimate portrait of flamenco guitarist Yerai Cortes, a young Romani artist navigating the weight of a centuries-old tradition while carving out something entirely his own. The film follows Cortes through performance, rehearsal, and the private spaces between, capturing flamenco not as spectacle but as a living, evolving language.

Why it matters: the Goya for Best Documentary is a strong quality signal, and the film bridges traditional flamenco with contemporary identity in a way that speaks far beyond Spain. If you see one documentary at the festival, this is the one.

The second half of Opening Night's double bill, Segundo Premio immerses viewers in Granada's late-1990s indie music scene, a specific time and place that shaped a generation of Spanish musicians. The film captures the tension between artistic ambition and the reality of making music in a city that both nurtures and constrains you.

Paired with the Yerai Cortes documentary, it makes for a double bill that uses music as a lens on identity, place, and the cost of creative commitment. Two films, one evening, two very different approaches to the same question.

The CORE section is where ASFF concentrates Spain's most celebrated recent films, the ones that have already swept awards circuits and festival selections. This year's lineup is particularly deep, with five Goya winners and two San Sebastian selections among the six films below.

The definitive Spanish film of the 2025/26 season. Los domingos won the Golden Shell at San Sebastian and then swept the 2026 Goya Awards with five wins, Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress (Patricia Lopez Arnaiz), and Best Supporting Actress (Nagore Aranburu). The story follows a teenage woman in the Basque Country who begins considering joining a cloistered convent, a decision that exposes the fault lines in her family: an emotionally distant father, an aunt whose involvement deepens the rift.

Ruiz de Azua, whose previous film Cinco lobitos was one of Spain's most acclaimed debuts, directs with devastating control. The film never tells you what to feel, it trusts you to sit with the discomfort. For anyone interested in where Spanish auteur cinema is right now, this is the essential screening.

Rafael Cobos is best known as the screenwriter behind Grupo 7 and Tarde para la ira (Goya winner for Best Film in 2017), taut, socially grounded Spanish thrillers. Golpes is his directorial debut, and he has chosen a distinctly Spanish genre to make it in: cine quinqui, the tradition of street-crime films set on Spain's social margins that defined the late 1970s and 1980s.

Set in 1980s Seville, the film revives a genre that has no real equivalent outside Spain, part social realism, part youth rebellion, part punk energy. Cobos attended the ASFF Launch Event in March for a Q&A, signalling that this festival premiere carries weight. For anyone curious about a strand of Spanish cinema that rarely travels, this is the entry point.

A dark comedy set in Madrid's Hotel Palace in 1939, weeks after the end of the Spanish Civil War. A young lieutenant and a maitre d'hotel must organise a banquet for Francoist generals in a city still in ruins. Stars Mario Casas and Alberto San Juan. Winner of the 2026 Goya Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume Design.

The film walks a sharp line between period drama and pitch-black humour, using the formality of a dinner setting to expose the absurdity and menace of the regime's first days. The production design alone, Hotel Palace recreated in meticulous detail, is worth the price of admission.

A painter enters a competition to create a contemporary reinterpretation of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, only to discover his own son is also competing. What unfolds is a comedy about artistic ego, family rivalry, and the impossibility of reimagining a masterpiece without losing yourself in it. Selected for San Sebastian's Made in Spain section.

There is a particular local resonance here for Dutch audiences: Bosch is one of the Netherlands' most celebrated painters, and the Garden of Earthly Delights has a permanent place in the country's cultural imagination. This is the lightest film on our list, and it earns its place by being genuinely funny while engaging with art that matters.

Part of ASFF's LGBTQIA+ section, Maspalomas tells the story of 76-year-old Vicente, who has lived openly as a gay man in the resort town of Maspalomas on Gran Canaria, one of Europe's most visible LGBTQIA+ communities. When he returns to San Sebastian, he goes back in the closet. The film stars Jose Ramon Soroiz and Nagore Aranburu.

Arregi and Goenaga, the directing pair behind The Endless Trench (Spain's Oscar submission in 2020), handle this story with characteristic restraint. It is a quiet film about visibility, aging, and the distance between a place that lets you be yourself and one that does not.

A documentary about the life and music of Antonio Flores, singer, songwriter, and one of Spain's most enduring cult figures, told through the voice and perspective of his daughter, Alba Flores. If that name rings a bell, it should: Alba Flores played Nairobi in La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), one of the most-watched non-English-language series in Netflix history.

The film premiered at San Sebastian in 2025 and goes beyond biography. Alba Flores is not simply narrating her father's life, she is reckoning with his legacy, his absence, and the weight of a famous surname. For the considerable audience that knows her from Money Heist, this is a chance to see her in an entirely different register. Discover more about Alba Flores and other artists featured at this festival on Outhere.

ASFF's Latin Pride section is dedicated to contemporary Latin American cinema as "a space for critical thought, memory, and cultural vitality." The 2026 edition carries a particular urgency: across the Americas, exclusionary rhetoric, setbacks in rights, and political instability are reshaping daily life. These two films respond to that moment from very different angles, one with satirical comedy, the other with raw, intimate drama.

Sixteen micro-stories. One actor. Guillermo Francella, Argentina's biggest comic star, plays a different character in each segment, and together they form a darkly funny, politically loaded dissection of Argentine national identity. Cohn and Duprat, who directed The Distinguished Citizen (Venice Best Actor for Oscar Martinez, 2016), are among Latin America's sharpest filmmakers. Their anthology format here is unusual and ambitious: each story is self-contained, but the cumulative effect is a portrait of a country arguing with itself.

Francella is a household name across the Spanish-speaking world, and his range across 16 characters, from the absurd to the devastating, is the film's central draw. This is social criticism delivered as entertainment, which is exactly the register that Cohn and Duprat do better than almost anyone.

The most urgent film in the entire ASFF 2026 programme. World-premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival in 2025, Aun es de noche en Caracas stars Natalia Reyes (Colombia, Terminator: Dark Fate) and Edgar Ramirez (Venezuela, Jungle Cruise, Carlos) in the story of Adelaida, a woman who buries her mother and finds herself stranded in a Caracas marked by scarcity, blackouts, and institutional collapse.

Rondon and Ugas, whose previous film Pelo malo won the Golden Shell at San Sebastian, use Adelaida's personal loss to map Venezuela's collective unravelling across decades. This is not a political pamphlet; it is a human story set against conditions that make ordinary life impossible. The Venice premiere and the international cast give it visibility, but the filmmaking gives it weight.

Dates: 10-19 April 2026

Venues:

• Pathe Tuschinski — Amsterdam's 1920s art deco cinema landmark on Reguliersbreestraat. The main festival venue and one of the most beautiful cinemas in Europe. Watching a film here is an event in itself.
• EYE Filmmuseum — On the IJ waterfront in Amsterdam Noord, EYE is one of the city's most architecturally striking buildings. The screening rooms are state-of-the-art.
• LAB111 — Oud-West's neighbourhood arthouse cinema on Arie Biemondstraat. Intimate, independent, and exactly the kind of space where a film festival belongs.
• Additional screenings at Cinema The Pulse (Amsterdam) and satellite venues in Amstelveen and Haarlem.

Tickets: Individual tickets and festival passes are available through the ASFF website.

Buy tickets: Programme and tickets

Tip: The Launch Event on 13 March at Tuschinski offered early ticket access. By now, certain high-profile screenings — particularly the Opening Night double bill and Los domingos — may be selling fast. Check the programme page early and book specific screenings rather than browsing on the day.

The Amsterdam Spanish Film Festival runs during one of Amsterdam's strongest cultural weeks, overlapping with Rewire Festival and just ahead of King's Day. Outhere is a cultural discovery platform that helps you find arts, music, film, and cultural events wherever you are. Discover more events happening in Amsterdam this April, explore the artists featured at ASFF, or read our guide to April in the Netherlands for a full overview of what is on across the country. You might also enjoy our coverage of Rewire 2026 and our guide to film festivals in Europe.

Whatever you choose to watch, we hope to see you out there.