In Álvaro López Alba’s “Three Summer Days” (“Tres días de verano”), a vacationing family’s dissimilar takes on an event threatens to drive them apart. It follows a father and his two kids on a beach holiday, the young girl, Cris, has fallen for a boy, causing a rift in her friendship with pal Miri. Her brother Dani, feeling isolated, spends the summer confined to his room, fixated on Miri.
Meanwhile, their father is engaged in a secret affair he desperately tries to conceal from them. Over these three days at the beach, the family will struggle to reconnect as insecurities, jealousy and hidden truths unravel their close-knit world. “I’ve based the story on personal experiences and that of my family and people around me,” López Alba told Variety , who only started making short films some six years ago, and in earnest just three years ago.
Given his experience as a psychologist, dealing in particular with youth, he has gathered copious material that have fueled the three shorts he has made so far: “Rosebud,” “La Mancha” and “Eli.” “Three Summer Days” is his debut feature. Developed at the Incubator program of the Madrid Film School (ECAM), “Three Summer Days” is one of 10 projects in development that participated in the ECAM Forum, the inaugural co-production showcase of the prominent Madrid Film School last June.
Family drama also took part in the EGEDA Next Gen FilmLab where it won the Best Project award. “The structure of this .