GATA Team recommends 15 iconic movies from the 90s’ that every cinema lover should know.
You better watch them all! Many more still to come.

1. Tacones Lejanos (High Heels)
   Pedro Almodovar 1991

A death connects a mother called Becky with her daughter Rebeca in this Almodovar drama. Rebeca’s husband was once the great love of her own mother, the diva “Becky del Páramo”. When he is murdered, the plot begins to twist and unravel, causing the two women to meet again after many years. 

2. Jamon, Jamon (Ham, Ham)
Bigas Luna 1992 

Jamon Jamon is a Spanish film by the director Bigas Luna, shot in the Monegros desert between Zaragoza and Huesca. It focuses on the story of Silvia and Jose Luis, a couple who are about to get married and have a baby. Not very happy with the situation, his mother decides to hire an aspiring bullfighter, Raul, to seduce Silvia and finally break the relationship between her son and Silvia. The story gets complicated when Raul begins to truly fall in love with Silvia.

A hilarious but serious and satirical film from deep Spain.

2. Tesis (Thesis)
Alejandro Amenabar 1996

“My name is Angela, and they are going to kill me”

Ángela is an image student who is writing her thesis on Audiovisual Violence. She begins to conduct an in-depth investigation about pornographic and violent films, until one day, she finds in the school library, a movie that is apparently a “ snuff film”. A film depicting real violence. 

Tesis, it's one of the best Spanish thrillers of the 90s, the plot is very well knitted, and you can't stop watching once you start.

3. Kika
Pedro Almodovar 1993

Kika, a sweet and innocent makeup artist, has a job with a new client; a dead one. That's what everybody thinks until he wakes up in the middle of the session, coming back from the depths of the attack, instantly falling in love with her. 

A dark comedy story that you will love from the Spanish master Almodovar.

4. El día de la Bestia (The Day of the Beast)
Alex de la Iglesia 1995

A priest believes he has deciphered the secret message of the Apocalypse; the Antichrist will be born on December 25, 1995, in Madrid. To prevent the birth of Satan's son, the priest teams up with José María, a young death metal fan. They both try to find out where in Madrid the apocalyptic event will take place.

5. Historias de Kronen (Stories from the Kronen)
Montxo Armendariz 1995

Carlos, a 21-year-old student, loves to provoke and transgress. It's summer and every night he meets his friends at the Kronen, a bar where alcohol is mixed with drugs.

Every night Carlos goes out, drinks a lot, takes drugs, flirts and returns to his house in the wee hours of the morning.

All this during a summer that will not end as well as it started.

7. Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto! (Nobody Will Speak of Us When We're Dead)
Agustín Díaz Yanes 1995

1. Gloria Duque, a Spanish alcoholic living in Mexico, witnesses a shooting between gangsters and the police while practising prostitution. One of the policemen, before she died, hands her a briefcase with the addresses of where the gang sends money around the world. When Gloria returns to Spain, she finds herself in more than one problem.

8. Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes)
Alejandro Amenabar 1997

César, an attractive young man who has inherited a large fortune from his parents, lives in a splendid house where he organizes luxurious parties. When one night he meets Sofía and falls in love with her, Nuria, her former lover, dies of jealousy. The next day, while driving with César, she tries to commit suicide. When Cesar wakes up in the hospital, he discovers that his face has been horribly disfigured.

9. Martin (Hache)
Adolfo Aristarain 1997

Hache a rock lover has a life-threatening accident and his father, who hasn't seen him for five years, flies in from Spain overcoming his phobia of airplanes and his intention not to return to Buenos Aires. When Hache recovers, already proposed by his mother, he travels to Spain to live with his father. There he will meet his young lover and his best friend who will change his own life.

10. La Buena Estrella (The Lucky Star)
Ricardo Franco 1997

Raphael is a sterile butcher who leads a sad and lonely life. One day he helps Marina, a one-eyed girl who was being beaten up by her boyfriend. He also hosts her at his home, even though he knows she is pregnant. Very soon, both of them consider fulfilling a dream that until then seemed impossible to them: to form a family.

11. Airbag
Juanma Bajo Ulloa 1997

Juantxo, son of an influential Basque family, goes with his friends Konradín and Pako to a luxury brothel to celebrate his bachelor party. Everything goes smoothly until he realises that he has lost his engagement ring inside the body of a prostitute. To his dismay, Joao Villambrosa, the Portuguese mafioso who owns the place, finds the ring and decides to keep it. Juantxo and his friends will try to recover the ring by visiting all the brothels in northern Spain.
The Spanish Hangover.

12. Perdita Durango (Dance with the Devil)
Alex de la Iglesia 1998

Perdita Durango is a Spanish-Mexican film about a prostitute named Perdita Durango and a murderer named Romeo Dolorosa. They decide to kidnap a couple of rich teenagers and take them with them to fulfil the order of a mafia boss; to transport fetuses from the border of Mexico to Las Vegas.

The film mixes "humour, love, Santeria, sex and action" in the same package. Although it was not very successful in Spain when it premiered, it is a movie that you HAVE to see.

13. Barrio 
Fernando León de Aranoa 1998

In one of those neighborhoods where neither the subway nor money reaches it, Javi, Manu and Rai share life in the neighborhood and a lot of problems. The first is the neighborhood itself, a place of large social housing blocks, dark brick, and dreary, depressing architecture. There are few things to do there and in August even less. The city center is far away and communication is poor, so the three friends spend most of their time on the streets of their neighborhood.

14. Los amantes del circulo polar (Lovers of the Arctic Circle)
Julio Medem 1998

Ana and Otto are two eight-year-old boys who one day meet after school. At that same moment a secret love story will be born that will close seventeen years later in Finland, in the same Arctic Circle.

The film tells us the beautiful and dramatic love story that the protagonists live, from their first meeting in childhood until they were twenty-five years old.

15. Torrente, El brazo tonto de la Ley (Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law)
Santiago Segura 1998

Torrente is an ordinary fascist and a sexually obsessed policeman who patrols Madrid in an old Seat 124 where only the music of "El Fary" plays. He is such a selfish character that he even forces his father to beg to earn extra money. One day, he agrees to train a group of inept young people to take down a drug trafficking ring.