Before the epidemic, rural life appeared on the verge of fading away. Yet after the curfew, a quiet exodus from cities toward suburban towns and the countryside emerged, a movement echoed in contemporary Spanish cinema through a cycle of stories that celebrate a shift from urban life to ecological living.
In that wave, Mikel Gurrea’s debut feature Suro stood out, premiering in the official section at the San Sebastián Festival. A young couple moves to Ampurdà to take charge of the cork oak land Helena inherited. The plan aligns with the principles of Iván, and two architects weave a cooperative spirit into the venture, entering the mushroom trade and learning the craft by joining a local team. They hire workers and begin to learn the trade, yet the process stirs doubts and questions about how far they should push their plan.
The setting shifts dramatically, exposing tensions that had remained hidden. At the outset, the couple appears coordinated, but as the story unfolds, deep divergences surface in their life goals, tests their unity, and reveal what each is willing to sacrifice for a shared dream.
The conflict of competing visions is also present in As Bestas. Rodrigo Sorogoyen presents a scenario in which a French couple comes to a Galicia town to renovate houses and plant ecological products, while locals fight to prevent selling land to a wind company. A return to the countryside becomes a nightmare, a disturbing catalog of threats that culminates in siege and aggression. The film speaks to belonging and fear of outsiders, a theme that also resonates with Suro through the immigrant narrative thread and the sense of place that grounds the characters.
Inside You Should Come to See Him, conflicts are less explosive but the same dilemma persists after the pandemic: swapping urban hostility for rural quietude. With telecommuting on the rise, a couple, played by Irene Escolar and Francesco Carril, relocates to a town outside Madrid, while their best friends, portrayed by Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz, misread or question the decision, leading to a heightened self-awareness as their world seems to crumble around them.
Yet the year’s most emblematic entry in this trend remains Alcarràs, a portrait of a deeply rooted family and a landscape that carries the weight of time. The Solé family has tended a peach orchard for generations, only to face eviction as the land is sold to wind-farm developers. Sorogoyen treats the same underlying conflict from multiple angles, embracing a naturalist approach that follows the fieldwork through the eyes of different characters—from the grandfather who grieves the loss of what he built to the younger generation who feels the pressure of rapid change and a shifting sense of belonging.
Returning to core themes, other films offer their own take on the journey toward identity and renewal. Duo by Meritxell Colell preserves the central motif of Con el viento, following a protagonist who reconnects with his past during a homecoming to Burgos with his elderly mother. Duo unfolds as a road map through fading towns of the Andean landscape where contact with ancestral essences triggers a search for self.
The woman portrayed by Laia Costa in Cinco Lobitos seeks shelter within her family home in Vizcaya, choosing to face postpartum challenges not alone but alongside a supportive circle. In El agua by Elena López Riera, the countryside becomes more than a backdrop; it embodies local color, traditions, and the rhythms of speech, places, and legends. This film argues for the value of local roots and cultural memory, suggesting that tradition can anchor people in a world that feels unstable.
Across these stories, Spanish cinema continues to spotlight a shift in how communities understand place and belonging. The move from city to countryside is not just a change of scenery but a reflection on economic pressures, ecological concerns, and the evolving sense of home. The films gather a mosaic of voices—from farmers to new residents, from elders to the young—each contributing to a broader conversation about movement, memory, and the future of rural life in a changing Europe.