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26th edition wrapped on Sunday.

Estíbaliz Urresola’s 20,000 Species Of Bees and Kattia G. Zúñiga’s Sister & Sister won top awards at 2023 Málaga Film Festival, taking best Spanish film and best Latin American film, respectively, as the Andalusian event closed on Sunday.

In other key awards at the festival’s 26th edition, Gerardo Herrero’s Under Therapy earned a special jury prize director and Matías Bize claimed the best director prize for The Punishment.

20,000 Species Of Bees won the Berlin Silver Bear for best leading performance for young Sofía Otero last month and added the Golden Biznaga for...

Estíbaliz Urresola Solaguren’s celebrated Spanish feature “20,000 Species of Bees” and Kattia G. Zúñiga’s Panamanian drama “Sister & Sister” took the top prizes at the Malaga Film Festival, garnering the Golden Biznagas for Spanish and Latin American pictures respectively.

“20,000 Species of Bees” also won best supporting actress for Patricia López Arnaiz and picked up the Spanish Cinematographic Informers Association’s Feroz Puerta Oscura award. The film’s success follows two awards in Berlin, including a Silver Bear for Sofía Otero for her portrayal of a young girl going through a gender crisis.

For Zúñiga, the Golden Biznaga is sure to help further propel “Sister & Sister,” an autobiographical story about two teenage sisters who travel from Costa Rica to Panama in search of their absent father. Pic drew upbeat reviews in Malaga following on its SXSW world premiere.

Also making waves at the Malaga Festival, which runs...

With a delicately morose charm, Spanish actress-turned-director Liz Lobato is presenting her debut feature project, “Tierra de Nuestras Madres” as part of the 11th Fanfic Industria’s Ibero-American Work In Progress strand.

The farcical fable scrutinizing globalization takes place in the village of La Mancha, where residents know each other thoroughly and tend to their routines like clockwork. There, beloved curmudgeon and central protagonist Rosario makes the rounds selling drug-laced fig salt to her neighbors as the town’s unknowingly sold out from under them by a bankrupt mayor.

Shot in black and white, the film gives far more than it takes and absurdly relays the somber tale of corruption and a community bound to its roots so tightly its willing to sacrifice a soul or two to stay put, as futile an endeavor as that may be.

The project is a co-production between Nieves Moroto of Spain’s Me...

Chilean industry forum Sanfic Industria bows its 11th edition with the launch of new virtual reality and women producers lab sections. Running Aug 11-19, Sanfic Industria will also include its mainstays: Wip Ibero-American, Santiago Lab: Fiction and Documentary, Sanfic-Mórbido Lab, Series Lab, Sanfic Net and Sanfic Series.

“By introducing a virtual reality section, we’re betting on new narrative formats,” said Sanfic Industria founder-director Gabriela Sandoval of the Sanfic Xr showcase, which will be open to the public at the forum’s official headquarters, Matucana 100.

“Making these films accessible to everyone creates a nexus between the public and the films’ creators,” she pointed out.

In a nod to the growing number of female producers across Ibero-America, Sanfic Industria will present a new space dedicated to female creators: Productoras Lab. The lab for both fiction and non-fiction projects in development will have a selection of seven debut and second films by women producers hailing from Peru,...

Buzzy titles such as “Guián,” “Rhinoceros” and “Of Books and Women I Sing” are among the 14 titles at Málaga’s extensive Wip showcase, a springboard in the past for the discovery of titles such as Spanish horror thriller “The Platform” which, winning the Latido Films Prize at Wip, has gone on to become the second most-watched non-English language movie ever on Netflix.

Awarded the biggest plaudit at last year’s Malaga Wip, Adrián Silvestre’s “My Emptiness and I” made a splash at February’s Rotterdam Festival and now competes at Málaga.

In a 2022 spread of titles presented over March 22-25, six hail from Spain and eight from Latin-America

In addition to the Málaga Film Festival award, private-sector prizes from Aracne Digital Cinema, Damita Joe, Latamcinema.com, Latido Films, Music Library, Yagán Films– are also at stake.

The Spanish section’s jury comprises Madrid Film School’s Luis Ferrón, Quatre Films...