After opening in Spain in the Fall of 2007, Juan Antonio Bayona’s elegant ghost story El Orfanato (English title: The Orphanage) went on to generate enthusiastic word of mouth responses from its many festival showings at Cannes, Toronto, Sitges, Austin and New York while picking up various honors such as Best New Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Goya Awards (Spain’s equivalent of the Academy Awards) and a nominee for the Golden Camera award at Cannes. I was lucky enough to see the movie during a visit to Girona, Spain where it was playing at a multiplex just a few blocks away from the wonderful Museu del Cinema which houses the Tomas Mallol collection (an amazing repository devoted to the beginnings and earlier origins of the medium known as the cinema).