Film Exclusive: La Primera Piedra 2018 Short

The film’s title emerges during the climax at the town well. The village elder, Don Gregorio, picks up a stone to drive Imani away, reciting the biblical passage, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." One by one, the villagers pick up stones. But as they turn to Mateo, the camera performs an extreme close-up on his hands—hands covered in the callouses of labor and the reddish clay of the earth. He opens his palms. They are empty.

However, in this exclusive, we have learned that a restoration is underway. The original 4K ProRes files were recently retrieved from a failing hard drive at the bankrupt company’s storage unit. A private screening is scheduled for December 2024 at the Seminci Film Festival in Valladolid. Following that, a limited-edition Blu-ray (with a 24-page booklet of Quintana’s storyboards) is planned for a 2025 release. Upon its premiere at the 2018 Gijón International Film Festival, La Primera Piedra received a standing ovation that lasted six minutes. Critic Elena Moya of Caimán Cuadernos de Cine called it "a stone thrown directly at the stained-glass window of Spanish hypocrisy regarding immigration and rural guilt." la primera piedra 2018 short film exclusive

Quintana confesses: "I made a mistake. I signed a bad distribution deal with a boutique company that went bankrupt in 2020. The rights are tied up in bankruptcy court in Barcelona. I cannot legally upload the film anywhere until the trustee releases the lien. It is Kafkaesque." The film’s title emerges during the climax at