As so often at ¡Viva!, Spain's past plays a prominent part in the proceedings. Vincente Aranda returns to the 1830s for his handsome adaptation of Prosper Mérimée's classic tale, Carmen, which stars Paz Vega as the beauty who tempts soldier Leonardo Sbaraglia off the line of duty. Veronica Sanchez's tempestuous peasant similarly breaks through Matthew Goode's upper-class reserve in South from Granada, Fernando Colomo's glossy take on Bloomsbury acolyte Gerald Brenan's autobiography. But more impressive is Anton Reixa's The Carpenter's Pencil, a Civil War drama in which Luis Tosar's envious prison guard takes revenge on the aristocratic Maria Adanez for spurning his affection by persecuting her doctor fiancé, Tristan Ulloa.

Tosar also shows to advantage, alongside Javier Bardem, in Fernando Leon de Aranos's Mondays In The Sun, a Ken Loach-like study of unemployed shipbuilders seeking to regain their sense of self-respect after the closure of their yard. The ramifications of capitalism also impinge on Box 507 - a thriller, in which bank manager Antoine Resines discovers that his daughter's death in a forest fire was not the tragic accident it initially seemed - and the low-budget Argentinian drama, Bolivia, which focuses on the exploitation and prejudice endured by a migrant worker in a Buenos Aires cafe.

Ensemble excellence is the key to both Chill Out! and Torremolinos 73. Yet it's the marvellous Candela Peña who holds both of these dark farces together. In the first, she plays the wife of a club performer whose chance of breaking into the movies depends on no one discovering that the director who has discovered him is lying dead in his bathtub. Her husband also has filmic ambitions in Pablo Berger's true-life 1970s story, in which Javier Camara's desire to keep his job with an encyclopedia company results in his wife becoming a Scandinavian porn star.

Film festivals don't always cater for teenage audiences, but there are a couple of offerings here that should provide a welcome alternative to the usual diet of mainstream pulp. Adolescent innocent Manuel Lozano learns the harsh facts of life as he arrives at yet another new school during the transition between Fascist dictatorship and constitutional monarchy in Antonio Cuadri's rites of passage picture, You're My Hero. But Juanjo Ballesta demonstrates even greater resilience in 4th Floor, an inspirational and often hilarious story about a gang of adolescent cancer victims whose courage in the face of amputation is only matched by their determination to breach hospital discipline.

The programme also includes a trio of acclaimed documentaries - Seville Southside, Dominique Abel's celebration of Romany Gitano music; Balseros, Carlos Bosch and Josep Maria Domenech's Oscar-nominated study of the raft refugees fleeing Cuba for Florida; and Basque Ball, Julio Medem's complex, but compelling introduction to the culture and politics of the Euska Herria, which have again come to the fore following the recent tragic events in Madrid.