Tesis [Widescreen]

Alejandro Amenabar’s debut thriller fittingly begins with our conflicted heroine Angela (Ana Torrent) witnessing the aftermath of a gruesome train suicide and then finding it difficult to look away. Tesis then proceeds to fashion an examination or thesis if you will on the nature of voyeurism and our compelling need ‘to look’. From this disquieting opening sequence we then move on to the films central stage, a film school in Madrid where Angela is writing a paper on violence in cinema and television. Her research leads her to the schools extensive audio visual library, where much to her horror she discovers a snuff movie catalogued away with the rest of the titles. When her tutor mysteriously dies (whom she discovers with the snuff movie in his possession), Angela enlists the help of fellow student and resident film geek Chema (Fele Martinez), whose obsessive taste for violent cinema makes him a suspect as well as her only ally in solving the crime. Things begin to get dangerous however when the pair realize that the girl tortured and murdered in the snuff movie is also a student at their school. Cast includes Eduardo Noriega, Xabier Elorriaga, Miguel Picazo, Nieves Herranz. In Spanish with English subtitles.