Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s ‘Sundays’ Gets a Trailer, Dropped by Movistar Plus+ 

No Spanish filmmaker has broken out to such quick auteurist stardom in the last five years than Alauda Ruiz de Azúa. Her first feature, “Lullaby,” a motherhood drama set on the Basque coast, was hailed by Pedro Almodóvar as “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years.” First seen at San Sebastian 2024, four-part series “Querer,” turning on marital rape, went on to win the top Grand Prix at France’s Series Mania, Europe’s most important TV festival. 

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Now Ruiz de Azúa is back at San Sebastián in her native Basque Country with “Sundays” (“Los domingos”), her first feature at the festival and one of its most awaited main competition entries.

A trailer, made available on Tuesday to Variety, gives some inkling of what industry and audiences at large can expect. In a brief answer, “Sundays” suggests some of the cardinal achievements of “Querer,” but in a feature film format: the mix of suspense drama and psychological and social observance grounded in a knowingly depicted Basque reality; the contrast of two mindsets – though far more ambivalent here in “Sundays,” and performances by some of Spain – and now the Spanish-speaking world’s –  most respected actors.   

The plot is known, and caught by the trailer: Ainara, 17, brilliant and an idealist, just has to choose what she studies at university before going on, foreseeably, to an illustrious career, her family hopes. 

Ainara, however, declares that she feels ever closer to God, and is contemplating joining an enclosed religious order.

That questions the liberal principles of her father and most especially aunt Maite who feels she should choose the life she wants but should at least have other experiences before doing so.

“That’s serious. A vocation,” Maite tells Ainara in a scene caught by the trailer. It’s true that love is a powerful thing. You have to experience a lot of things. You’re 17,” Maite tells Ainara.

She may be right, but does Ainara, at 17, have the right to be wrong? Is she not still traumatized by some event in her past? 

And could her future be seen as a battle between two wannabe mother figures – between Maite and the nun who befriends Ainara. “I thought, ‘Ainara knows you can tell me anything.’ You know that, right?” the nun tells Ainara. 

And does Ainara go through with her vocation? It looks like, from a briefly glimpsed scene, near the end of the trailer, that she may well do so.  

One of the pleasures of Ruíz de Azua’s work, in film and TV, is its capacity to generate questions, as the plot builds and on a psychological and social level. 

For the record, the song sung by the school choir which wells throughout the trailer, is “Into My Arms,” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It’s a love song. 

When Ainara sings “I don’t believe in angels, but if I did I would summon them and ask them to watch over you,” she looks across to a boy in the choir, who carries a candle for her. 

By the end of the trailer, when Ainara sits alone in her room, and hums to herself “Into my arms, oh Lord,” she appears to be directly invoking God.

Los Domingos: Production Details  

Debutant Blanca Soroa plays Ainara. “Sundays” also stars Patricia López Arnaiz, a 2024 San Sebastián acting winner for “Glimmers,” as Maite, Miguel Garcés (“Querer,” “20,000 Species of Bees,” “Maixabel”) as Ainara’s father, Argentina’s multi-prized Juan Minujín (“The Two Popes,” “El Marginal,” “Zama”) as Maite’s partner, Mabel Rivera, winner of a supporting actress Spanish Academy Goya for “The Sea Inside” as the grandmother and Nagore Aranburu, star of “Querer,” as a nun who befriends Ainara.  

“Sundays” is produced by Movistar Plus+, the biggest Spanish pay TV/SVOD operator, as well as Nahikari Ipiña at Sayaka Producciones, Marisa Fernández Armenteros’ Buenapinta Media (“The Mole Agent”), Sandra Hermida at Think Studio and Colosé Producciones (“Society of the Snow”) and Manu Calvo (“Wounded”). The film is co-produced and sold internationally by France’s Le Pacte, BTeam Pictures will distribute in Spain, releasing the film on Oct. 14. 

Launching a slate of event auteur theatrical features in January 2024, the Movistar Plus+ co-produced “Sirât,” directed by Oliver Laxe, won Cannes’ Jury Prize in May. 

“Sundays” joins another Movistar Plus+ Original in San Sebastian’s main competition, Alberto Rodríguez’s “Los Tigres,” a big canvas thriller turning on a brother-sister team of professional divers working at southern Spanish port Huelva.