Spain’s push to position itself as a premier player in the world’s film and TV industries extends to the documentary zone, as both audiences and industry delegates discovered in the impressive display of the country’s finished and work-in-progress films and co-production know-how at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival this week.
According to the European Audiovisual Observatory’s Yearbook 2023/2024, Spain is the European leader in documentary production, with 153 films in 2022—a sign that Spain’s €1.6 billion public investment in the strategic sector, intended to spur production growth for the 2021-2025 period, has taken root in the doc space.
On the opening morning of the festival’s industry conference, five Spanish producers on the panel “International Co-production: Working With Spain” used their current projects as a jumping off point to describe and discuss the benefits of and opportunities for co-productions to dazzled delegates.
In addition to the usual funding...
According to the European Audiovisual Observatory’s Yearbook 2023/2024, Spain is the European leader in documentary production, with 153 films in 2022—a sign that Spain’s €1.6 billion public investment in the strategic sector, intended to spur production growth for the 2021-2025 period, has taken root in the doc space.
On the opening morning of the festival’s industry conference, five Spanish producers on the panel “International Co-production: Working With Spain” used their current projects as a jumping off point to describe and discuss the benefits of and opportunities for co-productions to dazzled delegates.
In addition to the usual funding...
- 5/2/2024
- by Jennie Punter
- Variety Film + TV
Taskovski Films Sales has picked up documentary “My Sextortion Diary,” directed and produced by Patricia Franquesa. The film, which explores Franquesa’s reaction to an attempted digital blackmail that occurred in 2019, will have its world premiere at SXSW. Variety debuts the trailer, below.
In May 2019, a laptop belonging to Franquesa is stolen during a business trip in Madrid. After diligently filing a police report, her life goes on as usual until Aug. 1, when she receives a voice message from a friend. He notifies her that he has received a strange email with very personal pictures that seem to be of Franquesa. It is then that she realizes she is the victim of what is called sextortion.
An anonymous hacker accesses all the stored data in the stolen laptop and finds three very private photos of Franquesa. He threatens that if he doesn’t receive $2,400 he will mass-mail the pictures to...
In May 2019, a laptop belonging to Franquesa is stolen during a business trip in Madrid. After diligently filing a police report, her life goes on as usual until Aug. 1, when she receives a voice message from a friend. He notifies her that he has received a strange email with very personal pictures that seem to be of Franquesa. It is then that she realizes she is the victim of what is called sextortion.
An anonymous hacker accesses all the stored data in the stolen laptop and finds three very private photos of Franquesa. He threatens that if he doesn’t receive $2,400 he will mass-mail the pictures to...
- 2/27/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
March fest announces multiple competition sections.
SXSW announced on Wednesday that Netflix series 3 Body Problem from Game Of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss is the festival’s opening night TV premiere, while Universal’s action comedy The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt is the centrepiece screening.
Top brass at the Austin, Texas, festival (March 8-16) also unveiled feature and short competitions and Midnighters and Global sections, as well as select titles from other categories and Xr Experience for the 31st edition.
Headliners selections include world premieres of Pamela Adlon’s Babes starring Ilana Glazer,...
SXSW announced on Wednesday that Netflix series 3 Body Problem from Game Of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss is the festival’s opening night TV premiere, while Universal’s action comedy The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt is the centrepiece screening.
Top brass at the Austin, Texas, festival (March 8-16) also unveiled feature and short competitions and Midnighters and Global sections, as well as select titles from other categories and Xr Experience for the 31st edition.
Headliners selections include world premieres of Pamela Adlon’s Babes starring Ilana Glazer,...
- 1/10/2024
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
Music from the past, online abuse, girl and boy racers – plus the inner lives of primary school children were among the subjects tackled by films featured in the IDFA’s Upcoming Catalan Documentaries strand.
Designed to showcase projects nearing completion, the online event kicked off with “I Am” – a heartwarming film that traces four children over eight years through their primary school journey.
The documentary’s director Patricia M. Felix then waited a further four years to make the final part of her project, capturing the teenagers’ reactions and comments about their younger selves.
Subjects include Mia, who must overcome dyslexia and the charismatic Candella who the children gravitate towards. There’s also class joker Manuel who experiences issues when two of his close friends leave, and Neil, an adopted child from Russia who starts his school years drawing angry monster houses and finishes them by writing a performing a...
Designed to showcase projects nearing completion, the online event kicked off with “I Am” – a heartwarming film that traces four children over eight years through their primary school journey.
The documentary’s director Patricia M. Felix then waited a further four years to make the final part of her project, capturing the teenagers’ reactions and comments about their younger selves.
Subjects include Mia, who must overcome dyslexia and the charismatic Candella who the children gravitate towards. There’s also class joker Manuel who experiences issues when two of his close friends leave, and Neil, an adopted child from Russia who starts his school years drawing angry monster houses and finishes them by writing a performing a...
- 11/26/2020
- by Ann-Marie Corvin
- Variety Film + TV
Nuria Valls
Valls already has 14 producer or exec-producer credits, including Eugenio Mira’s “Grand Piano,” Fernando González Molina’s Spanish blockbuster “Palm Trees in the Snow,” and Dan Krauss’ “The Kill Team;” all alongside her partner Adrián Guerra at Nostromo. Her latest productions include Alex and David Pastor’s “The Occupant” and Molina’s “Offering to the Storm,” both acquired by Netflix. Valls will shortly resume shooting on “Los favoritos de Midas,” created by Mateo Gil, her first TV series. “I’d like to do exactly what we’ve done so far: Making all kinds of movies we’d like to watch, not only genre.”
Oriol MAYMÓ
Maymó participated in the production of Rodrigo Cortés’ “Buried,” Marcel Barrena’s “Little World” and Pau Freixas’ TV-series “The Red Band Society” among many other titles. Now based out of Corte y Confección, he has produced Leticia Dolera’s Canneseries winner “A Perfect...
Valls already has 14 producer or exec-producer credits, including Eugenio Mira’s “Grand Piano,” Fernando González Molina’s Spanish blockbuster “Palm Trees in the Snow,” and Dan Krauss’ “The Kill Team;” all alongside her partner Adrián Guerra at Nostromo. Her latest productions include Alex and David Pastor’s “The Occupant” and Molina’s “Offering to the Storm,” both acquired by Netflix. Valls will shortly resume shooting on “Los favoritos de Midas,” created by Mateo Gil, her first TV series. “I’d like to do exactly what we’ve done so far: Making all kinds of movies we’d like to watch, not only genre.”
Oriol MAYMÓ
Maymó participated in the production of Rodrigo Cortés’ “Buried,” Marcel Barrena’s “Little World” and Pau Freixas’ TV-series “The Red Band Society” among many other titles. Now based out of Corte y Confección, he has produced Leticia Dolera’s Canneseries winner “A Perfect...
- 6/22/2020
- by Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
Three or so years ago, a new generation of directors, many women, were beginning to break out in Catalonia. That was no flash in the pan.
Following on Nely Reguera’s “María (and Everybody Else)” and Carla Simón’s Berlinale Generation Kplus pic “Summer 1993,” first features by Diana Toucedo (“Thirty Souls”), Meritxell Colell (“Facing the Wind”), Neus Ballús (“The Plague”) and Celia Rico (“Journey to a Mother’s Room”) have set the film festival circuit alight, garnering bullish reviews and a slew of prizes. Many of these women are now on to their second or third features: Simón with “Alcarrás,” Ballús (“The Odd-Job Men”), Colell, Rico (“The Little Loves”), Pilar Palomero (“La maternal”) and Reguera (“The Grandson”), among others.
Now, women producers are taking center stage: Belén Sánchez at Un Capricho Producciones (Lucía Alemeny’s “The Innocence”), Patricia Franquesa at Gadea Films (Laura Herrero’s “La Mami”) are succeeding. Many...
Following on Nely Reguera’s “María (and Everybody Else)” and Carla Simón’s Berlinale Generation Kplus pic “Summer 1993,” first features by Diana Toucedo (“Thirty Souls”), Meritxell Colell (“Facing the Wind”), Neus Ballús (“The Plague”) and Celia Rico (“Journey to a Mother’s Room”) have set the film festival circuit alight, garnering bullish reviews and a slew of prizes. Many of these women are now on to their second or third features: Simón with “Alcarrás,” Ballús (“The Odd-Job Men”), Colell, Rico (“The Little Loves”), Pilar Palomero (“La maternal”) and Reguera (“The Grandson”), among others.
Now, women producers are taking center stage: Belén Sánchez at Un Capricho Producciones (Lucía Alemeny’s “The Innocence”), Patricia Franquesa at Gadea Films (Laura Herrero’s “La Mami”) are succeeding. Many...
- 6/22/2020
- by Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
Barcelona – “20,000 Species of Bees,” “Something Like Happiness” and “Los quinquis” are among five feature projects that will be put through development at the Ecam Madrid Film School’s pioneering Incubator program.
The Incubator forms part of The Screen, a program at the Ecam Madrid Film School, which is aimed at fostering links between on-the-rise Spain-based talent and Europe’s film and TV industries.
Produced by Gariza Films, “20,000 Species of Bees ” marks the debut feature of Estibaliz Urresola. It weighs in with the logline: “What would you do if your six-year-old son says he is a she?”
“It’s not just a movie about transgender children,” Urresola said, adding: “It is a story about our inner lives and how they interplay with the world outside; about the boundaries between these two worlds— and also about violence committed in family, even in the name of love.”
Director-producer Lara Izagirre directed Basque homecoming drama “An Autumn Without Berlin.
The Incubator forms part of The Screen, a program at the Ecam Madrid Film School, which is aimed at fostering links between on-the-rise Spain-based talent and Europe’s film and TV industries.
Produced by Gariza Films, “20,000 Species of Bees ” marks the debut feature of Estibaliz Urresola. It weighs in with the logline: “What would you do if your six-year-old son says he is a she?”
“It’s not just a movie about transgender children,” Urresola said, adding: “It is a story about our inner lives and how they interplay with the world outside; about the boundaries between these two worlds— and also about violence committed in family, even in the name of love.”
Director-producer Lara Izagirre directed Basque homecoming drama “An Autumn Without Berlin.
- 2/19/2020
- by Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
Spain’s Gadea Films is initiating early production on “Sara,” a docu-feature chronicle of the journey of a filmmaker, Spain’s Patricia Franquesa, to encounter Sara Bahai, the first female taxi driver in Afghanistan.
Produced by Laia Zanon and Franquesa at Gadea, who teamed for development with Alice Tillet and Kristian Mosvold at Substans Film, both in Norway, “Sara” won a Norwegian Cultiva Ekspress Artist Fund development award. In December. it also snagged a development award from the Catalan Institute of Cultural Enterprises (Icec).
It will now be introduced to the international market from Aug. 9 at Locarno’s Match Me! networking forum.
“Sara” represents Franquesa’s documentary directorial debut and the first lead feature production at Gadea Films, which Zanon and Franquesa launched in late 2016, having worked together producing projects since 2010.
Bahai is gradually achieving public recognition, which she’s been seeking for a long time, said Franquesa. Her biggest challenge,...
Produced by Laia Zanon and Franquesa at Gadea, who teamed for development with Alice Tillet and Kristian Mosvold at Substans Film, both in Norway, “Sara” won a Norwegian Cultiva Ekspress Artist Fund development award. In December. it also snagged a development award from the Catalan Institute of Cultural Enterprises (Icec).
It will now be introduced to the international market from Aug. 9 at Locarno’s Match Me! networking forum.
“Sara” represents Franquesa’s documentary directorial debut and the first lead feature production at Gadea Films, which Zanon and Franquesa launched in late 2016, having worked together producing projects since 2010.
Bahai is gradually achieving public recognition, which she’s been seeking for a long time, said Franquesa. Her biggest challenge,...
- 8/9/2019
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
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