Small Lives (Spanish: Vidas pequeñas) is a 2010 Spanish drama film directed by Enrique Gabriel [es] and co-written by Lucie Lipschutz [es]. Its ensemble cast features Ana Fernández, Roberto Enríquez, Alicia Borrachero, Francisco Boira, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, and Ángela Molina.
Bankrupt fashion designer Bárbara Helguera ends up living in a trailer park in the outskirts of Madrid called 'Vista Hermosa', coming across a wide array of characters.[1][2]
The screenplay was written by Gabriel in tandem with his mother.[5] The film was produced by Alquimia Cinema and El Baile production and it had the participation of TVE.[1]
Small Lives was presented as the closing screening of the main competition slate of the Valladolid International Film Festival (Seminci) on 29 October 2010.[6][7] Distributed by Emon,[1] it was released theatrically in Spain on 18 March 2011.
Jonathan Holland of Variety described the film as a "rangy, intimate drama about an array of society's victims living in a trailer park".[1]
Irene Crespo of Cinemanía rated the film 2½ out of 5 stars writing that the good thing "about 'telling nothing' about so many lives, [is] that some of them make it to the end safe and sound".[8]
Lluís Bonet Mojica [es] of La Vanguardia deemed Small Lives to be "a choral and well-structured film" about "a microcosm with a wide range of situations, without falling into weeping melodrama".[9]