Hello, stranger!

On Spain's Costa Blanca, a girl writes notes, sticks them in bottles, and tosses the bottles into the sea: "Hello, Stranger! I'm Paula and I'm 10." Fernando, a solitary man of 59, finds one of the bottles and writes to Paula. A correspondence ensues in which she tells him about her personal life (her father dead, her mother remarried, her friend gone to Algeria) ; he tells her he's not happy. Fernando's wife asks who the girl is in a photo on his desk. He makes up a story. Paula calls him ("How did you get this number?"), her mother wants to get rid of her dog, she'd like to meet Fernando. Where is this leading?

Javier Rebollo (Madrid, 1969) has directed the feature films, El muerto y ser feliz (2013), La mujer sin piano (2009) and Ce que je sais de Lola / Lo que sé de Lola (2006), which have earned him the FIPRESCI international critics award on two occasions (San Sebastián and London) and one from the Ibero-American critics (Montevideo), in addition to the Silver Shell Award from the International Film Festival of San Sebastián, among others (La mujer sin piano was Best Film at the AFI of Los Angeles and Lo que sé de Lola was nominated for the Best New Director Goya Award and won the Grand Jury Prize in Seoul). Between 1997 and 2002 he directed the short films En medio de ninguna parte (1997), Hola, desconocido! (1998), El equipaje abierto (1999), El preciso orden de las cosas (2001) and En camas separadas (2002), a series of short films starring Lola Dueñas that were released in the offical section of the Seminici and were twice nominated for Goya Awards for Best Short Film. They have been screened and won awards at festivals and on television all over the world. His work has been the subject of retrospectives in France, Germany, Belgium and Colombia. In 2014 the MoMa in New York screened El muerto y ser feliz, which is currently being released in the USA, France and Mexico. This film earned the International Critics Award at San Sebastian and José Sacristán's performance earned him the Silver Shell Award for Best Actor, the Goya and the Gaudí. In addition, he and his long-time co-screenwriter Lola Mayo did a series of large- format documentaries for the program Documentos TV on Spanish Public Television's La 2, for which he received the 2006 Queen Sofía Award for Journalism, among others. Through his production company Lolita Films, he is currently working on the feature film La isla del rinoceronte, by Luis Bértolo (Special Mention of the Jury at FIDLab Marseille), which is slated for shooting next autumn in Marseille; in the meantime, he is preparing his fourth feature film as a director La cerillera, muerte y transfiguración de una trabajadora europea. He is a professor of Directing at the Film School of Madrid, ECAM, and he believes that "another kind of cinema is possible".

Grand Prize of Spanish Cinema – Bilbao International Film Festival (Spain)