After its premiere in cinemas on the 4th of July, the team behind the most successful Canary film in recent years can boast of having reaffirmed with the public the awards it received at some of the most important film festivals in Europe before the audience in the Islands.
Full screening rooms, unanimous applause, additional showtimes, and requests from cinemas wishing to join the campaign are, in a nutshell, a good summary of the reaction that The Leaf Storm has generated among Canarian spectators.
It is worth mentioning that the film directed by Macu Machín and produced by El Viaje Films from Tenerife, not only became the first film directed by a Canary to compete in the Forum section of the Berlin Film Festival but also achieved a double win at its national premiere at the Malaga Film Festival, winning two Silver Biznagas for Best Film and Best Direction in the Zonazine section. It was also selected as the Best Canarian Feature Film of the year at the International Film Festival of Las Palmas.
Among the scheduled screenings during the first weeks, there were two sold-out shows. Both at the Multicines Atlántida in Lanzarote and the Yelmo Las Arenas in the capital of Gran Canaria, the screenings on the 7th and 8th of July, respectively, sold out. In La Palma, the island where the director hails from and where the film’s story – that of her own mother and aunts – takes place, a screening organized on a Thursday, without even a planned discussion or prior presentation, had the highest number of viewers of the day (over 80), surpassing commercial films like Inside Out 2 or Despicable Me 4.
Furthermore, The Leaf Storm even outperformed the highly anticipated final of the European Championship on the 14th of July, concluding three days of screenings at TEA Tenerife Arts Space that managed to attract the attention of 218 spectators.
In between, there were, of course, dozens of personal stories that have filled the heart of its director. “The predominant note is that, be it in Berlin, in Cartagena de Indias, or in a village in Canarias, in the end, there is always someone who raises their hand and tells me with emotion that when watching the film, they felt like they were seeing their own aunts or grandmother. And that, obviously, always moves me,” Machín recalled. The journey of The Leaf Storm on the big screen will continue, and it will break, in its path, that old stereotype that independent cinema does not fill cinemas.
The film’s premiere in cinemas across the rest of the country is already underway. El Viaje Films confirmed this week that it will start with the first screenings in Madrid from the 13th of September.
The best news, both for the film’s production company and its distributor, Pleamar Films, is that the film has left a good impression and there are new cinemas interested in showing it, while others have decided to extend the screenings at the request of the audience. This is the case of Yelmo Las Arenas in Las Palmas, which added extra showings on the 11th and will do the same on Monday, the 22nd of July.
In Tenerife, for instance, a new cinema has requested to join The Leaf Storm’s campaign. This is Yelmo La Villa in La Orotava, which has scheduled a screening for this Tuesday, the 23rd of July, at 8:00 pm. Meanwhile, at Cine Price in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the film will continue to be screened for the third consecutive week, with two daily showings.
“When the screenings end, I feel a very nice energy, there is a silence of emotion,” concluded the director of the award-winning film.
