Movie vocabulary in Spanish (for your next chat about series and films)

✌🏼 ¡Hola aventurero!

Sunday night. You've just finished a series, and your phone buzzes. It's a Spanish friend: ¿Has visto ya la serie nueva? ¡Me ha flipado! 🍿

You want to answer. You want to say you watched it all in one go, the ending was strange, and you need to talk about it. But all that comes out is sí, muy bien.

Let's fix that. Here's the movie vocabulary in Spanish you'll actually use: the words, the genres, the verbs people use in Spain, and how to say what something's about without ruining it.

1The words for the screen and the sofa

You'll see episodio on streaming apps, but in conversation most people in Spain say capítulo.

Teacher bit 🤓 Peli is just película cut short. Spanish in Spain does this with lots of everyday words: la tele (televisión), el finde (fin de semana), la bici (bicicleta). The short word keeps the gender of the long one, so it's la peli, even though it doesn't end in -a.

2Genres: una peli de…

English puts two nouns together: a horror film, a war film. Spanish puts the main noun first and links them with de. So una peli de miedo is literally "a film of fear".

Once you know the pattern, you can make your own: una serie de abogados (a legal drama), una peli de zombis, una peli de Navidad 🎄

Films and series also come up when people ask what you do in your free time. There's more on that in talking about hobbies in Spanish.

3The verbs people use in Spain

These are the verbs you'll hear in Spain:

¿Qué echan? has no subject. It's the same "they" as in English "what are they showing?", meaning nobody in particular.

And look at Me la vi. Vi la serie and Me vi la serie both mean "I watched the series". The me adds the idea that you watched all of it, start to finish. Spanish does the same with food: Me comí la pizza means you ate the whole pizza 🍕

4Say what it's about (no spoilers!)

When someone asks ¿De qué va? (What's it about?), they want two or three sentences, not the whole plot. This order works for any film or series:

Va de (from ir de) is the everyday way to say "it's about" in Spain. You'll also read trata de or trata sobre, which sounds a bit more formal, like a review in a newspaper.

Hasta aquí puedo leer comes from an old Spanish TV quiz show, and people still use it all the time.

5Giving your opinion

Now the fun part: was it any good?

Most of these end in -a because la peli and la serie are both feminine. For un documental, it's buenísimo and largo.

Teacher bit 🤓 Watch the tense. If you watched it today or this week, people in Spain say me ha gustado or me ha encantado. If it was last month or last year, it's me gustó or me encantó. That's the open box and the closed box from Spanish past tenses explained.

6A chat about what to watch

Two flatmates on the sofa on a Friday night:

Una de miedo drops the word peli, because everyone knows what you mean.

7Practise it this week

1. 1

   Sum up the last thing you watched

   Say three sentences out loud: what it is, what it's about with va de, and where it's set with está ambientada en. For example: Es una peli de época. Va de una familia que tiene una fábrica de chocolate. Está ambientada en Barcelona.

2. 2

   Give it a verdict, in the right tense

   Add one opinion from the "Saying what you thought" table. Use me ha… if you finished it this week (Me ha flipado) and me…ó if it was longer ago (Me encantó).

3. 3

   Watch one episode with Spanish subtitles

   Put on an episode of a Spanish TV series with Spanish subtitles. When you hear a word from this post, like capítulo or estreno, pause and repeat the line out loud.

Films and series are one of the everyday topics in my Roadmaps, with games, speaking prompts and cheat sheets, so you've got the words ready before the next chat on the sofa 🗺️

Now tell me 👀 What's the last thing you watched, and was it buenísima or un tostón? Cuéntame in the comments, no spoilers!

Lucía · Linguist, translator, Spanish teacher and author of the Visual Spanish Grammar Book.
Come and learn Spanish with me and other aventureros like yourself at skool.com/learnspanish 🎉