Albert Serra won the 2006 Golden Camera at Cannes, the prize for the best opera prima at the festival, thanks to the film Honor de cavalleria (Honour of the Knights), a very personal reinterpretation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Two years later, he was back again with this second film, Els cants dels ocells (Birdsong), which was scheduled in the Directors’ Fortnight section parallel to the festival and organized by the Film-makers’ Association.

The film La mort de Lluís XIV, a Franco-Portuguese-Catalan coproduction, was shot at a chateau between Limoges and Bordeaux, where one of the bedrooms was turned into a realistic reproduction of the king’s quarters in the Palace of Versailles.