Many Meanings for Echar

In its simplest sense, echar means to throw. But echar is one of those Spanish verbs that can be used flexibly, and it has literally dozens of translations depending on the context. Thus, if you think that echar una película might have something to do with "throwing" a film somewhere, you might be able to figure out that the phrase means to show a film (throwing the film on the screen, so to speak). Understanding echar is partly a matter of understanding the context, but it also is used in quite a few idioms.