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Barcelona, a city of cinema
Although not comparable to cities such as New York, Paris or London, Barcelona has been the venue for several international films, and its emblematic streets and places have been the scene of a handful of well-known productions.
One of the great names of European cinema of the sixties and seventies, the Italian Michelangelo Antonioni, partly filmed his metaphysical intrigue The Passenger in Barcelona, starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. La Pedrera, Las Ramblas or the Ciutadella Park are some of the places that are recognized.
Pedro Almodóvar is undoubtedly the most international Spanish director, and in one of his most renowned films, All about my mother (winner of the Oscar for the movie in a foreign language) chose to change the streets of his usual Madrid for those of Barcelona.
One of the great directors of cinema of all time, Woody Allen, directed the one that perhaps was the most media movie of all those who have been set in the city, the romantic comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona, starring Scarlett Johansson , Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. Bardem is also the protagonist of Biutiful, where the Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu shows the less friendly and touristy side of Barcelona. Ridley Scott, for his part, shot the final scenes of his thriller The Counselor, starring Michael Fassbender.
The French comedy L’auberge spagnole, by Cédric Klapish, starring a young Audrey Tautou, has a great role in Barcelona; The film is starring a group of students who are in the city thanks to the Erasmus program. And another comedy, in this case the Italian Manuale d’amore 2, has two of its episodes set in Barcelona, which portrays as an open and tolerant city. From the field of independent cinema, the Americans Whit Stillman and Susan Seidelman directed, respectively, the comedies Barcelona and Gaudí Afternoon.
The European superproduction Perfume, directed by German Tom Tykwer from the novel by Patrick Süskind, is shot on stage in Barcelona and elsewhere in Catalonia, although in this case they pretend to be France in the eighteenth century.