The new film from Pedro Almodovar, Broken Embraces – incidentally, a Focus Features International movie – comes out in the US in a few weeks. However, there’s a whole lot more to Spanish cinema than its most flamboyant director and Penelope Cruz, his luminous muse. And to amply illustrate this point, the Pacific Film Archive is embarking on a special film series, New Spanish Cinema, which casts the spotlight on the best new films coming out of the Iberian peninsula. The first film showing will be Amateurs, Gabriel Velázquez’s poignant tale of a runaway girl who connects with a solitary man she believes is her father, while Javier Fesser’s Goya-winning Camino, a condemnation of religious fanaticism, screens the following day. The second half of the four film season is made up of (English-sounding but Spanish-born) director David Planell’s feature debut The Shame, which centers on a Spanish couple’s difficulties after they adopt a Peruvian boy, and The Sound of the Sea, a sort of modern-day, animated riff by graphic novelist Miguelanxo Prado on the Orpheus legend, about a drowned sailor’s epic quest to be reunited with his lover.