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No company has a more powerful spread of productions at this year’s San Sebastian Festival than Telefónica’s domestic platform and super-producer Movistar Plus+. The group brings a festival competition movie, “I’m Nevenka,” a premium drama series, “Querer,” a broad audience thriller series, “Celeste” and “Mugaritz,” a documentary feature about Spain’s most cerebral restaurant.

The diverse projects underscore Movistar Plus+’s muscular new content initiatives as the company drives ever more into nonfiction, emerging as Spain’s leader, and launching its first movie slate in January. Spain’s biggest national investor isn’t pulling out of content; in fact, it’s diving into deeper.

For nearly a decade, Movistar Plus+ has both increased the amount of content it produces and diversified the kinds of productions it backs. During the early days of streaming, Movistar Plus+ was a pioneer of local production by investing larger-than- ever budgets in its TV productions.

In what remains the Spanish film industry’s biggest event of 2024, last January, pay TV Movistar Plus+, behind premium series like “A Perfect Life” and “The Plague,” summoned local press to unveil its biggest strategic move for the last few years.

Accompanying Movistar Plus execs Domingo Corral and Guillermo Farré were five of the coolest, most successful and relatively young filmmakers in Spain today: Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Alberto Rodríguez, Iciar Bolláin, Oliver Laxe and Ana Rujas. Together they outlined plans to make event auteur movies backed for commercial release in Spanish theaters by the promotional muscle of Movistar Plus+.

Six months later, Rodríguez, director of Goya Award winner “Marshland” and 1580s Seville thriller series “The Plague,” is caught on set by Variety on Spain’s southern seaboard, on a boat just off Huelva, home to huge smoke-belching refineries and stunning natural parks.

That setting provides “Los Tigres” a bigger canvas. However,...

New films by Julio Medem, Alejandro Amenábar, Alberto Rodríguez, Isaki Lacuesta, Jonas Trueba and Oliver Laxe join a brace of smart thrillers in a rich Cannes lineup from Spain.

“8,” (Julio Medem)

Medem returns towhat he does best: a love story transcending time and space and a poetic critique of recent history, according to sales agent Latido Films. “Fariña’s” Javier Rey and “La Mesías” Ana Rujus star as the lovers. Morena Films produces.

Sales: Latido

“As Neves,” (Sonia Méndez)

After a magic mushroom-fueled party, teens in a snowbound Galician village discover one of them is missing. The film was well-received at the Malaga festival.

Sales: Begin Again Films

“Barren Land,” (Albert Pintó)

From a director on “Money Heist” and “Berlin,” this suspense thriller captures how the drug trade devastates friendships and lives in Andalusía’s Cádiz. Film sports a great cast: Luis Zahera (“The Beasts”), Karra Elejalde (“While at War...

Entérate de todos los detalles de la película protagonizada por Luis Zahera. © Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures ha dado inicio al rodaje del thriller de suspense “Tierra de Nadie”, del director Albert Pintó. El rodaje se está llevando a cabo en diferentes localizaciones de Cádiz, y continuará más tarde en Madrid.

La trama sigue la historia de tres amigos: Mateo el Gallego, un heroico – a su pesar – guardia civil, Juan El Antxale, un pescador convertido en narco por la mala suerte y en el paro, y Benito el Yeye, un resignado e inteligente depositario judicial siempre a medio camino entre la ley y la delincuencia. Tres amigos separados por un lugar, Cádiz y un momento, el presente. Los tres están atrapados entre el abandono de las instituciones, el ascenso violento e imparable del narco en la provincia y el peligroso aumento del descontento social. Tres amigos atrapados en un polvorín que pondrá a prueba su amistad.

“Barren Land,” from Spain’s Albert Pintó, director of Netflix global blockbusters “Money Heist,” “Berlin” and “Nowhere,” have been snapped up by Spain’s Film Factory Entertainment.

From an original idea by producer Alvaro Ariza, “Barren Land” (“Tierra de Nadie”) is penned by Fernando Navarro, one of Spain’s go-to screenwriters whose credits include Netflix hits “Below Zero” and “Veronica.”

Film Factory will launch world sales on “Barren Land,” as it builds a powerful slate of upscale commercial packages. Sony Pictures Entertainment Iberia will release the film in Spain next year.

Now with principal photography underway in Cadiz, southern Spain, the suspense thriller captures the devastation of friendships, lives and the whole province by a rampant drug trade, action also expanding to the Straits of Gibraltar.

“An ode to friendship, focusing on three characters whose paths diverge due to the longstanding situation in the Southern part of Spain,” “Barren Land” turns on Mateo “El Gallego,...

Jean Labadie’s Le Pacte and sales agency Film Factory have joined Spanish pay giant Movistar Plus on the next film from Alberto Rodríguez (“Marshland”), which is shaping up fast with as one of the biggest packages from Spain this year at the Berlinale’s European Film Market.

Le Pacte will co-produce the thriller out of France and handle French distribution rights. Film Factory is launching international sales at Berlin. Movistar Plus, co-producing out of Spain with Kowalski Films and Feelgood Media, will bring the deepest pocket of any production powerhouse in Spain, backing what looks like a potentially big-budgeted movie.

Currently in pre-production, Rodríguez’s latest is scheduled for release in Spanish theaters via Buena Vista Intl. in 2025.

The film is also the latest from one of the most prominent Spanish directors of his generation, co-writer-director of both “The Plague,” still one of Movistar Plus+ biggest series, and “Prison 77,...

A new film industry superclass is emerging in Spain: movies powered or co-backed by its streaming giants.

Perhaps the biggest example, Netflix Spain’s Andes flight disaster “Society of the Snow,” scored two Academy Award nominations last month.

Now, in the run-up to Berlin, London-based Film Constellation has acquired most world sales rights to “The Captive,” from Oscar winner Alejandro Amenábar (“The Sea Inside”) and Mod Producciones, a $15 million period adventure epic on the literary makings of “Quixote”author Miguel de Cervantes, held to ransom in a Moorish corsair jail.

Film Factory Ent. will take to market Iciar Bollain’s “I Am Nevenka,” about a feminist pioneer in Spain, and an untitled project from “Prison 77’s” Alberto Rodriguez, two fruit of the first movie slate from Movistar Plus+, the biggest Spanish pay TV/SVOD player, announced in January.

Spanish movies overperform on Netflix and Movistar Plus+. As of Feb.

Telefonica’s Movistar Plus+, Spain’s biggest pay TV-svod operator, is set to co-produce new movies from Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Iciar Bollaín, Alberto Rodríguez, Óliver Laxe and Ana Rujas. It’s a move which sees the high-end Spanish TV powerhouse become one of Spain’s most significant movie players.

Titles in the slate are backed by top Spanish producers such as Agustín Almodóvar and Esther García at El Deseo – backing Laxe’s next – and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo at their high-flying new production house Suma Content, producing what will be Rujas’ debut feature as a director.

The acclaimed “La Mesías,” the latest series from Los Javis – as Ambrossi and Calvo are known – will have its international premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it will the only European series at this year’s event.

In a fillip for Spain’s box office, still 26% down on pre-pandemic levels, Movistar Plus+ will...

Inspired by the simmering one-man rebellion that kicked off a tremendous tide-change in Barcelona, writer-director Marcel Barrena (“Mediterraneo: The Law of the Sea”) and Spain’s The Mediapro Studio have begun filming “The 47.”

Tms has released first look images. The premise centers on social activist bus driver Manolo Vital, played by three-time Goya Award winner Eduardo Fernández (“Smoke & Mirrors”), as he grows increasingly outraged at the abject neglect faced by immigrant communities outside the city’s center, whose neighborhoods, peeled by immigrants from Extremadura and Andalusia, had only just achieved running water.

Stonewalled by the City Council, Vital seizes a bus used on Barcelona’s #47 line and extends its route to Torre Baró in an attempt to prove that the vehicle can safely service the outlying communities in need.

“What the film shows is that this good man tried to convince everyone that it was feasible. The contempt of...

Spain’s The Mediapro Studio is teaming with writer-director Marcel Barrena and Spanish star Eduard Fernández on real-life inspired social film “The 47.”

Scheduled to shoot in Catalan and Spanish June-July in Barcelona, “The 47” is based on the true story of Manolo Vital, a bus driver who, during the city’s expansion in the 1970s, help shape the Barcelona of today.

Produced by Jaume Roures and executive produced by Laura Fernández Espeso, Javier Méndez and Eva Garrido, the film is one of the projects The Mediapro Studio Distribution is presenting for international sales at the current Cannes’ Marché du Film.

Award-winning screenwriter-producer Alberto Marini co-wrote the script alongside Barrena.

Winner of three Goya Awards and a San Sebastian Silver Shell, Fernández plays the central character in the film.

The cast also takes in Clara Segura (“The Sea Inside”), Zoe Bonafonte, Salva Reina (“Con quién viajas”), Aimar Vega (“Prison 77”), Carlos Cuevas...

Former Film Factory executive Manon Barat joins company as dedicated sales executive.

Heading into Cannes XYZ Films has launched New Visions, an initiative to champion bold global voices, kicking off with Directors’ Fortnight entry In Flames.

Former Film Factory executive Manon Barat has joined the company as a dedicated sales executive and will work alongside longtime head of international acquisitions Todd Brown to oversee the slate.

The highly curated New Visions will discover and support the next generation of filmmakers and give established talents room to make smaller, more intimate and challenging work.

Besides Zarrar Kahn’s Pakistani-Canadian horror In Flames,...

Recently, there has been a consistent tide of well crafted and highly regarded films coming out of Spain. “Alcarràs,” “The Beasts,” “Lullaby,” “La Maternal,” “Prison 77,” to name just the five that the Spanish Academy Goyas singled out in early February.

This level of quality, over a short period, is getting noticed internationally. Last week the Glasgow Film Festival, Scotland’s largest, shone a light on eight films in its Viva el Cine Español program. A cultural moment is a strange beast, hard to fathom, but there are strong signals that Spanish Film is having one.

In addition to the aforementioned five, Glasgow added Andrea Bagney’s debut “Ramona,” “Wild Flowers,” from Jaime Rosales, another debut with Elena López Riera’s “The Water,” and a Penelope Cruz starrer, in Juan Diego Botto’s “On The Fringe.”

Glasgow’s Festival co-director Allison Gardner told Variety: “We seem to be seeing films...

Miguel Herrán as Manuel and Javier Gutiérrez as Pino in Prison 77

A taut drama exploring what life was like inside Spanish penitentiaries in the years just after the fall of the Franco regime, Prison 77 screened at the 2023 Glasgow Film Festival. Director Alberto Rodríguez was keen to tell the story behind it. Readers should be aware that there are some spoilers here, but nothing that detracts from the tension in a film where the fate of the central characters remains uncertain until the very last moment.

Jennie Kermode: What made you want to make a film on this subject, and how closely did you stick to real events?

Alberto Rodríguez: Prison 77 is a film that we have been trying to make since 2006, when we learned about the events that took place in Spanish prisons during the transition of the country to democracy. Much has been written about the changes...

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s take on a western wins nine prizes, but none for Carla Simon’s Berlinale winner

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts scored big at the 37th edition of the Spanish Film Academy Goya awards held on Saturday in Seville, scooping major prizes including best film and best director.

The ceremony celebrated a year hailed as one of the strongest for Spanish cinema in recent memory. However, one of Spain’s most high-profile films on the international stage, Carla Simon’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Alcarras, left the Goyas empty-handed despite 11 nominations.

The Beasts, which debuted in Cannes in the Premieres section,...

Sorogoyen’s take on a western wins nine prizes, but none for Carla Simon’s Berlinale winner

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts scored big at the 37th edition of the Spanish Film Academy Goya awards held on Saturday in Seville, scooping major prizes including best film and best director.

The ceremony celebrated a year hailed as one of the strongest for Spanish cinema in recent memory. However, one of Spain’s most high-profile films on the international stage, Carla Simon’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Alcarras, left the Goyas empty-handed despite 11 nominations.

The Beasts, which debuted in Cannes in the Premieres section,...

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s latest pic, The Beasts (As bestas), dominated the main prizes, taking home nine gongs, including best film and director at the 37th edition of Spain’s Goya awards Saturday evening.

The pic debuted at Cannes last year and led the Goya award nominations with 17 nods. The film’s story follows a middle-aged French couple who move to a small village, seeking closeness with nature. However, their presence inflames two locals to the point of outright hostility and shocking violence.

The Beasts also picked up wins for best screenplay, leading actor, and supporting actor.

Movistar+’s Modelo77 from Alberto Rodriguez, which trailed The Beasts with 15 nods, picked up five wins, all of them in technical categories. Carla Simón’s Golden Bear winner Alcarràs had 11 nominations but left empty-handed.

In other major wins, Alauda Ruiz de Azúa...

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s modern-day feminist Western, “The Beasts,” already a box office breakout in France and Spain, swept nine prizes including film, director, and original screenplay on Saturday at a celebratory 37th Goya Awards, given Spain’s big fest prizes and rally at its home box office.

The upbeat mood was tempered inevitably by the death of Carlos Saura, one of Spanish cinema’s greats and this year’s Goya of Honor, on Friday.

In a rare departure, a foreign actor, France’s Denis Ménochet (“Inglorious Basterds”) took best actor, winning for his marvellous turn in the conflict-negotiation themed “The Beasts,” as a French settler in modern-day deep Galicia who finally refuses to back down when taunted by locals. His attitude contrasts pointedly with his wife’s.

Produced by Movistar+ and Atípica Films, “Prison 77,” the movie of clearest big production ambitions – the sort of film which will probably now only be made by platform,...

“La Mesías,” from “Veneno” creators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, drinks deep from Catholic tradition from its very title — literally, “The Female Messiah” — to iconography and focus on faith.

Another awaited Movistar+ series, “The Left-Handed Son,” created by “The Plague” screenwriter Rafael Cobos, was presented to the press in July against a spectacular backdrop taking in, just across a waterway, Seville’s iconic Torre de Oro and, a little further away, the Giralda bell tower of Seville’s Cathedral.

In line with platform production trends the world over, rather than playing down local elements, Movistar+ is playing them up. For the Telefonica SVOD/pay TV player in Spain, this has been a longterm philosophy, reaching back to its earliest series in 2017.

No big European SVOD player has insisted as much as Movistar+ on capturing the hot button issues, history, culture (“Spanish Shame”), traumas (“The Invisible Line”) and landscapes (“Félix”) of its local market.

Packing its first full-on onsite edition since the pandemic, Spain’s San Sebastian Festival has never been busier or bigger. 10 Takes on what is shaping up as a vibrant edition:

Playing Off Powerful Market Forces

Nine of Netflix’s 20 Top 10 non-English-language films and TV series are sourced from Spain or Latin America. Platforms are battling to tie down talent.

This year, eight movies from Spain and Latin America play in competition alone at San Sebastian, the most important film event in the Spanish-speaking world. The fest’s main sidebar is its New Directors strand. San Sebastian’s focus on the Spanish-speaking world and new talent now aligns with powerful market forces. That fact plays out over the 2022 edition.

San Sebastian’s New Creative Investors’ Conference

CAA Media Finance is teaming with San Sebastian to organize the festival’s first Creative Investors’ Conference, running Sept. 19-20. Attendees take in international film...

The San Sebastian festival director reflects on the innovations for the 70th anniversary

José Luis Rebordinos has been the director of the San Sebastian International Film Festival since 2011.

He talks to Screen about this year’s 70th anniversary edition which will celebrate San Sebastian’s history as well as the exciting present moment for Spanish cinema and host an expanded industry section.

The festival opens today, Friday September 16, and runs until September 24.

San Sebastian prides itself as a festival that showcases both new and established Spanish filmmakers. How would you describe the Spanish productions selected this year?

There’s a...

Glenn Close no longer will preside over the San Sebastian jury and has canceled her trip to the festival due to a family emergency.

“I deeply regret that I will not be able to take part in the Festival as there has been a family emergency for which I must stay home,” Close said in a statement. “I apologize to the Festival, the Jury, the filmmakers, the Donostia honorees, and the festival audience, that I will not be there to celebrate with you all.”

Argentinian producer Matías Mosteirín, who already was announced as part of the jury, will serve as the president. Mosteirin’s feature film as a producer, Bolivia, received the Young Critics Award at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes. He recently executive produced Marcelo Piñeyro’s series El Reino (The Realm) for Netflix.

The jury will be filled out by French casting director and filmmaker Antoinette Boulat,...

With the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear awarded to Spanish director Carla Simón and four of the country’s titles featuring in competition at Cannes, there’s a quiet air of confidence among Spanish industry professionals, including José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastian Film Festival.

“This has been the best year for Spanish cinema,” Rebordinos tells Deadline shortly after revealing the line-up for San Sebastian’s latest edition, running from September 16-24.

This year the prominent Spanish festival, celebrating its 70th edition, kicks into gear with some 200 films across its six competitive and seven non-competitive sections. The selection will be bookended by Friday night’s opening film Prison 77 (Modelo 77), from Spanish filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez, and Neil Jordan’s latest film Marlowe, starring Diane Kruger and Liam Neeson, which will close the festival. The full lineup includes the European Premiere of Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio’s The Wonder,...

The San Sebastian Festival opens on Sept. 16 with a bang: Alberto Rodriguez’s “Prison 77,” most probably the biggest Spanish film of 2022, the latest title from one of the Spain’s most preeminent auteurs and a foretaste of one possible future face of Spanish cinema, thanks to Movistar+.

“Prison 77” begins as a fish-out-of-water jail survival thriller. Manuel, in 1977, a young accountant, played by Miguel Herrán, is sent to Barcelona’s legendary Modelo penitentiary pending trial for embezzlement.

It grows, however, for all of its length, as a character-driven tale of psychological observance, as Miguel gradually befriends Pino, his seen-it-all cell mate, who just wants a quiet life.

Charting “the evolving relationship between two completely different people, a young accountant with his whole life before him, and Pino, who’s lived nearly his whole life behind bars,” “Prison 77” is a story of friendship and solidarity, says José Antonio Félez...

American actress Glenn Close has been announced as the jury president for the Official Section of the 70th San Sebastian Film Festival, running from September 16-24.

Close will be joined by the French casting director and filmmaker Antoinette Boulat, Danish filmmaker Tea Lindeburg, Argentinian producer Matías Mosteirín, the Spanish writer Rosa Montero, Lesotho filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, and the Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason.

The jury awards the Golden Shell for Best Film and the Silver Shell awards for Best Director, Best Leading Performance, Best Supporting Performance, as well as jury prizes for Cinematography and Screenplay. The Official Awards will be announced and presented at the festival’s Closing Gala on September 24.

Close was last at the Spanish festival with The Wife, which closed out the Official Section in 2017. The film went on to earn Close her eighth Academy Award nomination.

As previously announced, Spanish filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez will open the...

Neil Jordan’s “Marlowe,” which stars Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger, is set to close the San Sebastian Festival next month. It will be the film’s world premiere.

Jordan, who is known for writing features including “The Crying Game” (for which he won an Oscar) and directing “Interview with the Vampire,” which featured Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, will be in attendance at the Kursaal Auditorium on Sept. 24 for the “Marlowe” premiere alongside the film’s stars.

Based on John Banville’s novel “The Black Eyed Blonde,” “Marlowe” is set in 1930s Los Angeles where private eye Philip Marlowe (played by Neeson) is tasked with finding a beautiful heiress’s missing former lover. The character of Marlowe was originally created by Raymond Chandler almost a century ago.

Jessica Lange (“American Horror Story”), Danny Huston (“Succession”), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (“His Dark Materials”), Daniela Melchior (“The Suicide Squad”) and Alan Cumming (“The Good Wife...

Click here to read the full article.

The 70th San Sebastián Film Festival unveiled its competition line-up Tuesday, with new works from award-winning directors Sebastián Lelio, Hong Sang-soo and Ulrich Seidl in the running for the 2022 Golden Shell.

Chilean filmmaker Lelio, who won an Oscar for best international feature with A Fantastic Woman (2017), will premiere his latest, The Wonder, in San Sebastián. The period drama, based on the Emma Donoghue novel, is set in mid-19th century Ireland and stars Florence Pugh, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Burke and Toby Jones.

The prolific Hong Sang-Soo, who just won the Jury Prize in Berlin in February for The Novelist’s Film, brings his latest minimalist drama, Walk Up, to the Spanish festival. The plot involves a middle-aged film director and his estranged daughter who are being shown around a building owned by an interior designer.

Seidl, the Austrian director who has made a career...

The latest project from Spanish filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez, “Modelo 77” (“Prison 77”), will open the 70th edition of San Sebastian this fall.

The pic, which will play out of competition, is a political thriller set in Spain. The film stars Miguel Herrán — who is best known for playing the characters Rio and Christian Varela in “Money Heist” and “Elite,” respectively — and Javier Gutiérrez. The movie marks Rodríguez’s fifth time in San Sebastian’s Official Selection.

“Modelo 77” will screen following the festival’s opening gala in the Kursaal Auditorium on Sept. 16.

Inspired in true events, the story follows Manuel (Herrán), a young accountant who is awaiting trial for embezzlement and faces a sentence of 6-8 years, a disproportionate punishment for the crime committed. Together with cellmate Pino (Gutiérrez), he joins a group of ordinary prisoners fighting for their rights in the dawn of democracy in Spain following 40 years of dictatorship.

Rodríguez made...

Ecuador’s Ana María Barragán (“Alba”), Brazil’s Joâo Paulo Miranda (“Memory House”) and Spain’s Meritxell Colell (“Facing the Wind”) will put awaited new feature film projects through San Sebastián’s Ikusmira Berriak, one of Spain’s foremost development labs.

Also selected for 2022’s edition are a second reputed Latin American auteur, Argentina’s Maximiliano Schonfield (“Jesús López”) as well as Spain’s Irati Gorostidi (“In the Rain”) and a second Catalan filmmaker, Jaume Claret (“Ella y jo”).

As part of an eight-week residency, Ikusmira Berriak’s six directors will attend a Tabakalera tutorial Artist’s Space over March 14-April 24, and then return for September’s San Sebastian Festival.

Arguably the strongest lineup in Ikusmira Berriak history, next year’s selection rolls of a powerful and still building film-tv ecosystem in San Sebastian.

In the case of Ikusmira Beriak, this brings together the San Sebastian Festival, the most important...

Last year, September’s San Sebastian worked a minor miracle, staging a safe on-site festival as second-wave Covid-19 built up in Spain. This year, on-site attendance will be up, though travel problems, caution and costs in Latin America, the U.S and Asia will prevent a full attendance.

That said, this year’s festival, running Sept. 17-25, will be firing on all cylinders — as a Spanish-language movie emporium, a new talent hub and launchpad for the local Basque industry. Following, seven takes on the most important film event in the Spanish-speaking world:

Star Power: Cruz, Banderas, Bardem, Depp, Cotillard, and Chastain?

Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas are expected for the Spanish premiere of “Official Competition” and Javier Bardem the world premiere of “The Good Boss.” Despite some opposition Johnny Depp will receive a career-achievement Donostia Award as, less controversially, will Marion Cotillard. Jessica Chastain, fest organizers hope, will attend for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,...

Since 2017, when it released its first original production, “Velvet Collection,” Movistar Plus has produced and aired 45 original or returning series in Spain.

Now it’s looking to raise the ante, investing more in original production than ever before, says Movistar Plus president Sergio Oslé.

“Original production is a brutal anti-churn driver. Consumption of our original content is directly linked to customer satisfaction and consequently to loyalty,” says Movistar Plus CEO Cristina Burzako.

“In such a disruptive environment with a huge proliferation of brands and platforms and somehow, with some fatigue of entertainment, we must ensure we deliver a complete, personalized and curated entertainment proposal.”

This involves “integrating all key global brands [although they tend not to be exclusive deals anymore] and building our original production, which is more important than ever to drive differentiation.”

Building original production now cuts several ways. Movistar Plus is maintaining its original series output. It is also plowing more into non-fiction.

At September’s San Sebastian Festival,...

Opening up what could be a rich vein in Spanish movies coming onto the open market, Film Factory Entertainment has acquired world sales rights outside Spain to “Modelo 77,” the next film by Alberto Rodríguez, director of “Marshland” and “The Plague.”

A potential jewel in Spanish cinema’s 2022 crown, “Modelo 77” is produced by Spanish pay TV/VOD giant Movistar Plus and Madrid-based Atípica Films, Rodríguez’s career-long producer. It raises the large question of whether “Modelo 77” will mark a fully-fledged embarkment by Movistar Plus into regular movie co-production with Spain’s film industry.

Few titles, if that were to happen, will tick more boxes than Rodríguez’s “Modelo 77,” which Film Factory will bring onto the open market at this week’s Toronto Festival.

A penitentiary drama-thriller feature directed by Alberto Rodríguez and written by Rafael Cobos and the director, the creative powerhouses behind “Marshland” and Movistar Plus banner series “The Plague,...