Barcelona on Film: from The Passenger to Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008): Woody Allen’s love letter

Woody Allen’s comedy sends two American friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), to spend a summer in Barcelona, where they fall under the spell of a painter, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), and his tempestuous former wife, María Elena, played by Penélope Cruz, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

The city is the film’s fourth star. Park Güell, with its mosaic dragon and the gingerbread lodges at the gate, appears early in the story, the friends look out over the city from the rooftop of Casa Milà, La Pedrera, and Tibidabo’s hilltop gives the widest view of all.

Park Güell →

The Passenger (1975): Jack Nicholson on Gaudí’s rooftop

Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger stars Jack Nicholson as a reporter who takes over a dead man’s identity, and Maria Schneider as the young woman he meets along the way. Casa Milà, La Pedrera, which counts it among the most outstanding films ever made in the building, remembers the two stars strolling among the warrior-like chimneys of its roof terrace.

La Pedrera has appeared in more than fifteen films. Its roof is open to visitors, and the evening visits, when the city lights come on below, are the most cinematic of all.

Casa Milà – La Pedrera →

All About My Mother (1999): Almodóvar in Barcelona

Pedro Almodóvar left Madrid for one of the key films of his career. In All About My Mother, Manuela (Cecilia Roth) takes the train from Madrid to Barcelona after a tragedy and finds herself among a whole family of friends: Agrado, the actress Huma Rojo, and a young nun played by Penélope Cruz. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

There is no official trailer for this film on the studio’s or distributor’s own channels, so we do not embed one.

Biutiful, Perfume and the city in close-up

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful (2010) shows a Barcelona far from the postcards, and Javier Bardem won the best actor award at Cannes for his role as Uxbal, a father living on the city’s margins. Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) was filmed in Barcelona and Catalonia, with the streets of the old city dressed as 18th-century Paris.

Walk the Gothic Quarter in the early morning, before the shops open, and it is easy to see why the city can play so many centuries.

Game of Thrones in Girona

Under an hour from Barcelona by high-speed train, Girona became part of Westeros and Essos for the sixth season of Game of Thrones. The broad Baroque steps of the cathedral played the Great Sept of Baelor in King’s Landing, and the narrow stone lanes and stairways of the old town were the streets of Braavos, where Arya is chased through the market.

Girona is a lovely day out in its own right, with its painted houses along the River Onyar and the old Jewish quarter.

Girona: the back story →

The Sitges Film Festival

Every October, the seaside town of Sitges, south of Barcelona, hosts the Sitges Film Festival, the International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, one of the leading festivals of fantasy and horror cinema in the world. It began in 1968 as a week of fantasy films, and it has been held ever since, with premieres, retrospectives and midnight screenings.

Sitges is half an hour from Barcelona by train or along the Garraf coast road.

Sitges: the back story →

Our advice

Watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona before you go, then book an evening visit to the roof of La Pedrera and think of Nicholson and Schneider. Keep a day for Girona, and if you are here in October, a night at Sitges.

Over to you. Which Barcelona film do you love, and which scene would you add? Tell us below or in our forum: we read every message, and the best suggestions will join this page.

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