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Esta es la historia de una redención. © Disney+

Disney+ ha compartido el primer tráiler y póster de El clan Olimpia, su nueva serie de ficción basada en hechos reales.

En El clan Olimpia, la vida de Olimpia da un giro radical cuando a su marido le diagnostican un cáncer. Desesperada por salvarle la vida y mantener a su familia a flote, comienza vendiendo hachís en su barrio. Pero cuando se propone costear un tratamiento en Estados Unidos, da un paso más allá: se adentra en el tráfico de cocaína. Junto a su socio, el Moreno, Olimpia asciende vertiginosamente en el mundo del narcotráfico, estableciendo vínculos con cárteles colombianos y la mafia napolitana. Sin embargo, su entorno, una familia de tradición merchera, jamás aceptaría que una mujer se dedicara a ese mundo. Obligada a llevar una doble vida, Olimpia construye un entramado de mentiras para proteger su secreto. Pero todo se...

Cristina Marcos y Karra Elejalde protagonizan la película de comedia. © Isii Group

La cineasta granadina Violeta Salama (Alegría) está rodando en Gran Canaria el que será su segundo largometraje, Cataratas, una comedia sobre la madurez y los sueños incumplidos.

Cataratas sigue a Auri (Cristina Marcos), una ama de casa que se aventura a descubrir sus deseos y alcanzar la independencia gracias a la inesperada llegada de su primer dinero “propio”. Con su tarjeta de débito, Auri está decidida a descubrir el mundo de los caprichos, mientras su marido (Karra Elejalde) está obsesionado con convertir a su nieto en un futbolista millonario para evitar su realidad de jubilado y el declive de sus facultades físicas.

La película, que cuenta con un presupuesto total de 5,1 millones de euros y ganó el concurso de guiones Break On Time 59’, está protagonizada por Cristina Marcos (Tacones lejanos) y Karra Elejalde (Ocho apellidos vascos).

En su segunda película,...

David Pérez Sañudo (“Ane is Missing”) and Carlos Vila Sexto (“Motivos Personales”) are ready for a different kind of hero in “Detective Touré.”

A six-episode series, backed by Spanish public broadcaster Rtve, Detective Touré Aie, Tornasol Media, DeAPlaneta and Basque state TV Eitb, the series is based on stories by Jon Arretxe.

The series first caught attention when selected as a project at Series Mania’s 2022 Co-Pro Pitching Sessions. Sneak-peaked at Content Americas in January, it was one of the highlights at its Spain Content Goldmine.

Set in Bilbao’s neighborhood San Francisco, it sees an immigrant from Guinea – with acute skills of deduction – who becomes immersed in a complex investigation, with the Nigerian mafia on his trail.

“We are used to having police officers involved in these kinds of shows, but an illegal immigrant? That’s something we have never seen before, at least in Spain,” says Vila Sexto.

Mubi Podcast: Encuentros returns with a series of special episodes in audio and video.This episode features:Ernesto Alterio (Argentina), an actor who has been nominated for two Goya Awards for his performances in Fernando Colomo’s The Stolen Years and David Serrano’s comedy Días de fútbol. He has worked with several renowned directors from Argentina and Spain, including Marcelo Piñeyro, Mariano Barroso, Emilio Martínez-Lázaro, Carlso Saura, Benjamín Ávila, and Álex de la Iglesia. Cecilia Suárez (Mexico), an actress who has been nominated for three Ariel Awards, and has won two Platino Awards. In recent years, she has worked on Manolo Caro's film and streaming projects, as well as films by Fernando Colomo and Violeta Salama. In this episode, the guests talk about acting as a space where identities dissolve and words can take on new meaning. In front of a live audience, Cecilia and Ernesto meet to...

Suggesting an appreciable recovery in the dynamism of international film markets, Madrid-based Latido Films has unveiled a raft of deals on its Cannes line-up, led by standout sales for Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s Cannes Premiere player “The Beasts.”

The Spain-set rural thriller was acquired by Movies Inspired in Italy and Imagine in Benelux.

Co-produced by Spain’s Arcadia Motion Pictures and Sorogoyen’s Caballo Films with France’s Le Pacte, “The Beasts” has also been taken by Kino Mediteran in former Yugoslavia territories and Transilvania Film in Romania.

Meanwhile, fruit of Latido’s strengthening of its remake rights sales strategies, the company has optioned Mexican movie adaptation rights on Nicolás Postiglione’s drama “Immersion” to Paloma Negra Films and Whisky, as a French redo of Gastón Duprat’s Spanish-Argentine drama “Masterpiece” is moving into production.

Also, Latido is in advanced negotiations on further remake rights deals in France, Italy and Mexico,...

Spain’s top independent sales agents are prepped and ready for this year’s online American Film Market; however, most are eagerly awaiting the return of in-person events, seen as a more productive platform for selling independent cinema abroad. The optimism is cautious, though, with theatrical prospects for international independent films in a post-covid world still hard to predict.

Traditionally, AFM has been a popular launchpad for Spanish films to find distribution in the non-Spanish-speaking world but, while most of the regular faces will be attending digitally, many are holding back their bigger titles for Berlin, where they can be pitched in-person and meetings can be held face-to-face.

“Online markets have been really important for us over the past year, but now we need in-person events. The success of Mia in Rome is proof of that,” said Latido Films general director Antonio Saura, who hosted three market premieres at the...

The South of Spain is getting its own dedicate post-production studio, Antípodas Film Lab, the first of its kind in the region. Based out of Seville, the state-of-the-art facilities are co-founded by a group of post-production experts made up of José M. G. Moyano, Juan Ventura Pecellín, José Manuel Rocha, Manuel Terceño, Amparo Martínez and Darío García García.

Although the studio is based in Spain and the bulk of their work is likely to be done on Spanish productions, their ambitions certainly seem to reach far beyond the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, Antípodas website is published in English, inviting companies from around the world to make use of the facilities and the staff working there and emphasizing connectivity, including an internal 100gbe/40gbe network and a dedicated fiber line.

The Antípodas Film Lab facilities boast three fully equipped editing rooms, a Dolby Vision Hdr color grading room, a 2K viewing room,...

Set in Melilla, an autonomous city of Spain situated on the north coast of Africa, Violeta Salama’s debut feature “Alegría” premieres at this year’s Guadalajara Film Festival. The heartfelt family drama centers around Alegría – curt matriarch and host to her niece’s upcoming wedding – and the varied relationships with the women in her orbit. “Alegría” stars Mexican actress Cecilia Suárez, whose aplomb and comic timing anchors a film filled with familial chaos and clashing traditions.

Salama co-wrote with Isa Sánchez, drawing from the director’s own experiences growing up in Melilla. Indeed, “Alegría” plays at once as homage to a city whose vivid contrasts and blended culture perfectly reflects the contour of the characters’ interconnected dramas. The women of “Alegría” paint a mural of strength, love, courage, compassion and trust, and at last show their bond is unbounded, finding the self in selflessness.

Variety spoke with Salama ahead...

An in-person Guadalajara Film Festival (Ficg), which has moved its traditional spring dates to the fall, runs Oct. 1-9 this year. It opens with Dennis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” following its splash in Venice, and closes with the North American premiere of the first two episodes of Netflix’s animated series “Maya and the Three” from Mexico’s Jorge Gutiérrez.

Given the ongoing pandemic that is still hampering some travel, the festival expects fewer participants. Speaking to Variety in mid-September, festival director Estrella Araiza said that at that moment the Festival had about 300 confirmed participants while it normally had as many as 1,500.

Cinemas will be at 50% capacity at the festival even though Mexico has seen most cinemas opening at 100% capacity. “We want to adhere to the strictest protocols to keep our guests safe,” Araiza noted.

Some activities, such as the Masterclasses, will be available online. A novelty this year, the live...

French studio Gaumont’s Cannes player “Aline, The Voice of Love,” freely inspired by the life of Canadian pop star Céline Dion, was partially filmed in Andalusian provinces of Málaga and Almería in June 2019.

Directed, co-written and starring France’s Valérie Lemercier, “Aline” screened July 13 out of competition as part of Cannes’ Official Selection, earning a full five-minute standing ovation.

Co-produced by Gaumont, Rectangle Productions, TF1 and De L’Huile in France, Caramel Films in Canada and Belgium’s Belga Productions, the two-week Andalusian shoot of the film was serviced by Áralan Cinema Services.

“The climate and light of Andalusia helped the producers to set scenes that took place in Brazil, Italy, Monaco and Las Vegas,” said Gonzalo Bendala, co-founder of production house Áralan Films, whose international film servicing label, Áralan Cinema Services, launched in 2019.

For Meredic Bourlat, production manager at Paris-based Rectangle, “Aline” marked a return to lensing in Andalusia...

Cecilia Suárez (The House of Flowers) and Augusto Aguilera (Too Old To Die Young) are set as leads opposite John Ortiz in ABC’s drama pilot Promised Land.

Written by Matt Lopez, Promised Land is an epic, generation-spanning drama about two Latinx families vying for wealth and power in California’s Sonoma Valley.

Suárez plays Lettie Sandoval, the matriarch of the Sandoval family, a wealthy vineyard-owning family in the Sonoma Valley. Lettie will do anything to keep her family, with all its fraying allegiances, intact. She is proud of the fortune the Sandovals have built, but the arrival of a figure from Lettie’s past soon causes her to question whether the cost of achieving the American Dream is too high.

Aguilera will play Mateo Sandoval,the hardworking, highly capable general manager of the Heritage Vineyard, but as the stepson to patriarch Joe Sandoval (Ortiz), he has never felt fully accepted by the wealthy,...

Leading Spanish sales company Latido Films has snapped up international sales rights to Violeta Salama’s directorial debut, “Alegria.” Argentina’s Leonardo Sbaraglia joins a stellar European-Latino cast that includes Mexico’s Cecilia Suárez (“La Casa de las Flores”), Spanish actresses Laia Manzanares (“Merlí”) and Mara Guill (“Caronte”) as well as French-born Sarah Perles.

“’Alegria’ is one of the opportunities a sales agency just cannot let pass,” Latido’s Antonio Saura declared. “It’s a funny, sad, charming and totally enjoyable story that dwells on the personal past of the film director, which is told with the ingenuity and charm of someone that cherishes memories and has accepted the multicultural richness of the little-known Spanish city of Melilla, where the story unfolds,” he added.

Seville-based La Claqueta, producer of Spain’s submission to the International Oscars race, “The Endless Trench,” co-produces the comedy with Clara Nieto’s newly-founded Powehi Films.

Exclusive: Breaking Through The Lens (Bttl), the initiative set up to promote female and non-binary filmmaking voices, has selected the 10 projects that will take part in its 2020 edition during this week’s Cannes virtual market.

For the event’s third edition it will partner with producer Kathryn M. Moseley’s One Two Twenty Entertainment, which has recent credits including Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter and Body Brokers with Michael Kenneth Wiliiams.

Run by Daphne Schmon, Emily Carlton and Elpida Stathatou, Bttl would have taken part during the physical Cannes festival in May but had to pivot to online as per the rest of the market and fest.

The 10 projects hail from seven countries and include Tokyo Talents fellow Janus Victoria’s debut feature Kodokushi, and queer ensemble buddy comedy Let’s Do This from non-binary Canadian Screen Award-nominated director Lora Campbell.

Each project will benefit from development investment from One Two Twenty Entertainment,...

Breaking Through The Lens, an initiative launched three years ago to promote emerging female directors, has unveiled the shortlist of projects vying to participate in the 3rd edition of its pitching platform set to take place during the Cannes Film Festival.

The selected projects, which will be pitched to over 100 financiers and key industry people during Cannes, were announced during the European Film Market on Feb. 25.

Spanning 13 countries, this year’s shortlist of 20 titles includes Tamika Guishard’s African dance-driven feature “Rhythm in Blues;” Daresha Kyi’s U.S. documentary “Mama Bears” which follows conservative Christian mothers whose lives are transformed as they accept their Lgbtq children; Ahd Kamel’s Saudi Arabian feature “My Driver and I” set in 80s and 90s and centering on an unlikely friendship between a privileged Saudi girl and her Nubian driver; and Laura Moss’ feature debut “Birth/Rebirth,” a female-driven Frankenstein adaptation.

Set to be announced in early April,...