News

Beta Film, the leading European independent film-tv company, has picked up international sales rights to Leticia Dolera’s family drama “Pubertat – Secrets, Lies and Human Castles,” the Spanish writer-director-actor’s follow-up to “Perfect Life,” her Canneseries wining take on adult relationships and challenged coming of age,

Structured as a six one-hour-episode series, “Pubertat” completes Beta’s line-up at the upcoming London TV Screenings, which runs Feb. 23-28.

In “Pubertat,” a Max Original series, Dolera takes a look at lost love between parents and their teenage children and how it might be rediscovered, after an alleged sexual assault that sheds light on the adults’ sexual taboos.

The series is set in a Catalan town with a long-standing tradition of building human towers, the “castells.” Declared Intangible Heritage of Humanity by Unesco, “castells” are not only a spectacle of local festivities but a symbol of the importance of each of its members,...

The battle for success on the new drama series scene is the battle for talent, led by screenwriters. Following, portraits of Spanish TV scribes or creators, sometimes writing teams, who’ve made an impact, or look set to do so:

Fran Araujo

2022 was Araujo’s year. He co-wrote Berlin Competition’s “One Night, One Day” and “Rapa,” Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow. “Offworld,” a collective series he coordinated, was a Variety’s International TV Show of the Year. An iconoclast – “if I do the same thing, I get bored,” he says – who tears up the rule book.

Aina Clotet

Best known for acting, winning at Malaga for “The Wild Ones,” but a driving force as co-creator, director and star behind “This Is Not Sweden” a €1.5 million grant recipient and groundbreaking Spain-Scandinavia-Germany co-pro, turning on a couple who think they’ve found a model lifestyle. But “there are no guarantees,” says Clotet.

Fully on-site last week for the first time since 2019, Spain’s Conecta Fiction & Entertainment, its first major TV event, returned to much of the winning formula of its early pre-pandemic editions: A spectacular setting in Spain, here the august historical city of Toledo; TV project pitches; an intense conference strand; marvellous networking opportunities, most especially the possibility of spending quality time with mover and shaker industry figures from Spain and Latin America.

“I love to be here and it’s healthy, mainly for networking. I’m learning a lot, it’s like going to school,” Fremantle’s Manuel Marti enthused at Toledo. Most attendees would agree with him.

But, compared to 2019, the industry has moved on and is now buffeted by larger turbulence. Following, 12 takeaways on a robust, intense 6th Conecta Fiction, running June 21-24:

Conecta Fiction: Bigger Than Ever…

This year’s edition was the biggest ever, with 728 delegates,...

Leticia Dolera, co-writer, lead director and star of the Movistar Plus-HBO Max produced “Perfect Life,” a 2019 double Canneseries winner, is developing a new series, “Puberty,” which looks sure to be one of the hottest titles at this month’s Conecta Fiction & Entertainment.

Now in development, “Puberty” will be presented in Conecta Fiction’s High-End Series section.

Penned by Dolera and writer-producer Almudena Monzú and to be directed by Dolera, “Puberty” (“Pubertat”) turns on an alleged sexual assault among adolescents, which sheds light on the sexual taboos of the adults in charge of them.

“Can a 13-year-old boy be a sexual aggressor? And who’s responsible? The under-age boy, his family or society? Surely all of them,” the synopsis runs.

“‘Puberty’ talks about the weight of taboo and how this is transmitted between generation and generation, at a cultural, emotional and psychological level,” Dolera commented. “One of the big taboos...

Madrid-based Zeta Studios, producer of Netflix phenomenon “Elite,” is set to co-produce “Picadero,” a neo-noir six-part detective series already set up at Colombia’s Fidelio Films, one of the highest-flying companies in Latin America, and fast-emerging Barcelona-based Amor y Lujo, whose co-founder Almudena Monzú created “Picadero.”

Isabel Coixet, one of Spain’s greatest modern filmmakers is attached to direct episodes of the series. Her movies take in “My Life Without Me,” with Sarah Polley, “The Secret Life of Words,” starring Polley and Tim Robbins, and “The Bookshop,” toplining Emily Mortimer.

Monzu and Amor y Lujo co-founder and producer Andrea H. Catalá will pitch the series at next week’s Series Mania Forum on Aug. 30.

Drawing inspiration from Spanish film director Iciar Bollaín’s “Mataharis” and great detective classics, “Picadero” turns on Llanos who sets up in Barcelona to escape a dark family past and makes a living as a private...