News

Madrid-based Onza, one of Spain’s top indie production-distribution houses, has kicked off filming on Season 2 of hit gridlock comedy series “Traffic Jam” (“Atasco), which is set to premiere on Prime Video Spain.

It has also shared on-set photos in exclusivity with Variety.

Launched May 24 on Prime Video Spain, the first season of the series hit No. 1 on the platform the day after, with an audience warming to the unexpected, comical and engaging stories that unfold in a huge traffic jam on the outskirts of Madrid.

Written and directed by Rodrigo Sopeña, as the series’ Season 1, the six new episodes continue the producers’ bet on a renowned Spanish star cast, this time featuring Silvia Abril, Carlos Sobera (“Little Coincidences”), Adriana Torrebejano, Carlos Areces (“The Last Circus”), Luis Zahera and singer-actress Edurne.

Some actors from Season 1 will reprise their roles in Season 2, the producers said.

Season 1’s stellar cast featured prominent...

Unspooling in Cadiz over Oct. 25-31, the South International Series Festival is a bellwether on trends and highlights for the current season. What could be some of its star performers? Following, 10 titles to track, which also often say something about the way the market is going.

“The Big Jump” (Atresmedia International Sales)

One of Atresmedia’s biggest bets at Mipcom, a biopic series about the rise to Olympic Gold Medals at Sydney and Athens of Spanish gymnast Gervasio Deferr and, in a second timeline, his descent into drugs and alcohol, incapable of accepting failure in competition and lost when retired. Oscar Casas plays Deferr, with “Gangs of Galicia” helmer Roger Gual directs. An Atresplayer Original Series, bowing on Nov. 17.

“La Favorita 1922” (Mediterraneo)

From “Grand Hotel” through “Velvet” and “Cable Girls,” Ramon Campos’ Studiocanal j.v. Bambu Producciones has carved out its international reputation, creating modern gender-agenda melodramas that make...

In an acquisition which underscores the often shared sensibility between Canal+, France’s biggest pay TV operator, and Movistar Plus+, the largest Spanish pay TV player, Canal+ has acquired Canneseries winner “The Left-Handed Son” (“El hijo zurdo”), a Movistar Plus+ original series.

The series will bow on Canal+ on April 5 in a deal brokered by Movistar Plus+ International.

A psychological thriller with a lyrical undertow which surfaces to moving effect in key scenes, “The Left-Handed Son” marks the auspicious directorial debut of Rafael Cobos, the career-long co-scribe of Alberto Rodríguez, from 2005’s “7 Virgins” through international hit “Marshland” to 2017’s “The Plague,” still one of the biggest series which Movistar Plus+ has ever made.

World premiering at Canneseries in April 2023, “The Left-Handed Son” went on to win best series in the TV festival’s short form competition.

Produced with Átipica Films and co-directed by Paco R. Baños, who helmed four of its six episodes,...

Conoce todos los detalles de la miniserie basada en un crimen real que conmocionó a España. © Netflix

Netflix ha desvelado el impactante tráiler y póster de “El Caso Asunta”, la miniserie de ficción que aborda un crimen real que conmocionó a España.

El 21 de septiembre de 2013, Rosario Porto y Alfonso Basterra denuncian la desaparición de su hija Asunta, cuyo cuerpo aparece horas después junto a una carretera en las afueras de Santiago de Compostela. La investigación policial pronto desvela pistas que señalan a Rosario y Alfonso como posibles autores del crimen. La noticia conmociona a toda la ciudad e incluso al país. ¿Qué puede llevar a unos padres a acabar con la vida de su hija? ¿Qué se esconde tras la fachada de una familia perfecta?

La miniserie de 6 episodios está dirigida por Carlos Sedes (“Fariña”) y Jacobo Martínez, producida por Bambú Producciones y protagonizada por Candela Peña (“Todo sobre mi Madre...

Featuring famed directors such as Argentina’s Ariel Rotter and Spain’s Benito Zambrano, who have not only played but won at Berlin and San Sebastian respectively, Malaga’s 19-pic out of competition strand is a testament to the buyer-driven pulling power of Malaga , thanks to its significant market.

Multiple other name auteurs pack out the selection, which also includes a far stronger line is broad audience comedies than most festivals would risk.

This is certainly territory for discoveries and breakouts – a healthy Málaga tradition.

A brief drill down on titles:

“La Bandera”

Director: Martín Cuervo

“La Bandera,” produced by Álamo Producciones Audiovisuales and Idesia Films, humorously unfolds a family’s inheritance dispute, in the sense that sons, Aitor Luna and Miquel Fernández, aren’t getting what they expected from their father played by Spanish veteran actor Imanol Arias.

“A Blue Bird”

Director: Ariel Rotter

Respected Argentine auteur Rotter returns...

Fabula-Fremantle’s “Hot Sur,” The Mediapro Studio’s “El Mal” and “Two Nights in Lisbon,” from Portugal’s Hop Films and the U.K’s Heroes Films, look like potential standouts at next week’s Content Americas Copro Pitch 2024, one of its industry centerpieces.

These series projects will be joined by crime mystery thriller “Delito,” from Barcelona’s Grup Focus TV & Films, behind banner Amazon Original “Reina Roja,” “Iron Woman,” a tumultuous political saga from Brazil-based Jarsom Wayans, two high concept doc series – Argentina’s “Climate Migrants” and Brazil’s “Mystery of the Megafauna” – and bio doc feature “Farraquito, a Flamenco Story,” profiling the famed flamenco bailaor.

Shaping up as one of the biggest new titles to be brought onto the market at Content Americas, “Hot Sur” marks the latest from a fruitful 2019 multi-year first-look deal between Fremantle and Fabula, headed by Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín, which has already yielded “La Jauría,...

Five Catalan movies made Cannes Festival’s cut, six were selected for Marché du Film sections. Details and other top Catalan movies on the Croisette:

“20,000 Species of Bees,” (Estibaliz Urresola)

One of the big winners at Berlin, taking Leading Performance, and two other key prizes, and now healthy racking up healthy sales, including a Film Movement U.S. pickup, “Bees” builds from a naturalistic base – a family off for a village summer holiday – to become a moving an ode to women’s freedom. Produced out of Barcelona by Valérie Delpierre’s Inicia Films. Sales: Luxbox

“Blondi,” (Dolores Fonzi)

From La Unión de los Ríos, behind “Argentina, 1985”), the awaited directorial debut of Fonzi, star of Santiago Mitre’s Cannes winner “Paulina,” a double mother-son coming of age dramedy. Sales: Film Factory

“A Bright Sun,” (Monica Cambra, Ariadna Fortuny)

Facing the end of the world, Mila, 11, tries to keep her family together by celebrating a party.

Benito Zambrano’s “Jumping the Fence” joins Roya Sadat’s “Sima’s Song,” and Pau Calpe’s “Werewolf” in the lineup of Spanish Screenings Goes to Cannes, a selection of five pix in post which underscores the ever broadening compass – in genre, setting, protagonists, production bases and models – of film production in Spain.

“Sima’s Song,” for example, is set in 1979 Kabul, “Jumping the Fence” on the Morocco-Spain border in Africa.

Many titles, though still in post production, come laden with prizes as projects, prestige deals or rich talent. “Sima’s Song,” from Afghan director Roya Sadat, whose “A Letter to the President” was shortlisted for an Oscar, won the Taicca Award at Busan’s Asian Project Market and the Ifi-Pas Award at Mumbai’s Film Bazaar. Its producer, Alba Sotorra, was nominated for an International Emmy as a director for “The Return: Life After Isis.”

The second feature from Orr,...

Media giant Mediaset has acquired Italian distribution rights to Spanish writer-director Benito Zambrano’s drama “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake,” produced and sold by Barcelona-based studio Filmax.

News of the deal comes just before Filmax screens “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” to buyers at this year’s online European Film Market.

Described as high-quality cinema for adults and predominantly female audiences, “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” adapts the novel of the same title by screenwriter and casting specialist Cristina Campos. It has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide.

A member of Spain’s generation of directors that broke out in the 1990s, helping Spanish movies find far larger favor with audiences at home, Zambrano’s breakout debut, 1999’s “Alone,” won the Panorama Audience Award at Berlin.

He has gone on to make three more features – 2005’s “Havana Blues,” 2011’s “The Sleeping Voice” and 2019’s “Out in the Open” – earning two screenplay Goyas,...

Currently filming in Seville, the project is being produced by La Claqueta and Pecado Films and stars María León, Salva Reina, Rubén Fulgencio and Pedro Casablanc. El universo de Óliver, the first fiction film from Alexis Morante, is currently filming on location in Seville, before heading to Campo de Gibraltar in May to wrap up the shoot. The main cast features María León (The The Sleeping Voice), Salva Reina and Pedro Casablanc (nominated for a Best Actor Goya for his performance in B) along with breakout star Rubén Fulgencio in the titular role, who — like all of the film’s child actors — was selected after a round of auditions with over a thousand hopefuls. In Morante’s own words, “It’s a story that reminds us of the magic and adventure of growing up, an emotional coming-of-age tale...

The Seville-born helmer is turning the best-selling Cristina Campos book into a film, which he is currently shooting on the Balearic and Canary Islands. On 25 October, filming got under way for Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake, a big-screen adaptation of the acclaimed novel of the same name by Cristina Campos, who took on the task of writing the film’s screenplay together with its director, Benito Zambrano. The Seville-born filmmaker is thus preparing to paint another portrait of courageous, determined women after previously doing so in his feature debut, Solas (which scooped five Goya Awards in 1999), and The Sleeping Voice (2011). Principal photography, which will last a total of eight weeks, is taking place in Valldemossa (Majorca) and on Gran Canaria. The cast of this tale about friendship, motherhood and the secrets concealed within a forgotten recipe, revolving around a group of women who, courageously and with no inhibitions,...

Barcelona-based studio Filmax has acquired world sales rights to “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake,” an uplifting second chance in life drama from Spain’s Benito Zambrano, writer-director of critically admired features that have scored festival and Goya awards and broken out to sales abroad.

Also handling local distribution in Spain, Filmax will bring “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” onto the market at November’s online American Film Market.

Produced by Filmax and Luxembourg’s Deal Productions, whose credits include Berlin Festival’s 2019 Panorama opener “Flatland” and 2017’s “High Fantasy,” which screened at Berlin, Toronto and Rotterdam, “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” turns on two sisters, Anna and Marina.

Separated as teens, they re-meet to sell a bakery in Majorca that they’ve inherited from a mysterious benefactor. Neither are happy in life. Anna is locked in a loveless marriage; Marina travels the world as an Ngo doctor, a lonely existence.

Framing world premieres of “Maragall i la Lluna” and “Wishlist,” plus new movies from Justin Kurzel, Marjane Satrapi, Matteo Garrone and Caroline Link, Barcelona’s Bcn Film Fest aims to become one of the first festivals in Europe to stage a live on-site edition, running June 25 to July 2.

The dates and ambition were re-confirmed Tuesday when Bcn Film Fest, one of the biggest film events in the Catalan capital, announced its lineup.

“One of the most beautiful things about watching films is to do so in a theater as a shared social and cultural experience. To be able to discuss films immediately with people after seeing them. Bcn Film Fest aims to maintain that this year,” said festival artistic director Conxita Casanovas.

While pushing the pleasures of a live event, from the quality of projection and sound to cinema viewing as a social and cultural community event and driver of local economic economy,...

It’s Cuba! Where else would The Havana International Film Festival’s Opening and Closing Night take place except in The Karl Marx Theater? Opening with music by Cuba’s greatest salsa group, Los Van Van, the 34th edition is still headed by its founder and Fidel Castro’s teacher in Communism, Alfredo Guevara, who dedicated this edition to the new generation of filmmakers which represents the future of cinema. The 10 day festival showcased a broad range of new and not-so-new films from Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Peru and fellow Caribbean nations, Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, Curacao and others whose cinema is being aided by their governments and whose youth is creating a new international cinema with the support of Europe and even, sometimes, Asia.

While this edition paid homage to the youth, also present and recalled were the members of the generations from the ‘60s like Aldo Francia, Chileans Miguel Littin, Patricio Guzman, Jorge Sanjines, Fernado Birri, Fernando Solano, Cacho Pallero, Santiago Alvarez, Glauber Roch, Carlos Diegues, Leon Hizsman, Juaquim Pedro, Tomas Guierrez Alea, Mario Handler, Walter Achugar and many others who in the years ‘67 and ‘68 were themselves inspired by such luminaries as Joris Ivens. Together they were the originators of the phenomenon El Cine de America Latina or New Latin American Cinema influenced mainly by Italian neorealism and other movements of social cinema. Its function was to go against U.S. models and to illuminate the troubled realities of Latin America in the hope of restoring cinema of the continent. Its key moment was the meeting of Latin American Cinema 1967 , which had its impetus in the Chilean Aldo Francia , the Cinema Club of Viña del Mar , the Cuban Alfredo Guevara, the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Film (Icaic) and the Argentine Edgardo Pallero.

Illuminaries such as Annette Benning whose film The Kids are All Right was screening there and Hawk Koch, president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, wrote fan letters to Fidel and Raoul and then mixed and caught up with the top critics and journalists of Latin America and festival participants in the gardens of the Hotel Nacional. Miguel Litten and spouse, the parents of Chile’s Christina Littin, one of Chile’s current top producer/ distributors, were often seen there. Their presence reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Clandestine in Chile about the time when Miguel disguised himself to reenter Pinochet’s Chile from whence he had been exiled. So many stories of exile and return mark the modern history of Latin America.

The first day of the Havana festival was devoted to Eictv, the international film school that Gabriel Garcia Marquez founded in 1986 with his Nobel Prize money on land donated by Cuba. Today it is headed by Rafael Rosal who in his own country, Guatemala, set up the first infrastructure for a film industry – a film school, a film festival and production facilities.

Eictv has a student body from everywhere in Latin America, Europe and even from North America. Last year as the emissary for Woodbury University in Burbank CA, I brought them their first agreement with a U.S. institution and exchanges between students and staff have already begun, bringing TV documentary filmmaker Rolando Almirante for a second time to teach documentaries.

Eictv’s event at the Festival de Cine Nuevo en Habana is Nuevas Miradas, 12 chosen projects whose producers and directors present themselves to the industry and compete for three awards.

Coincidently with the lateness of this blog which I wrote from the Palm Springs International Film Festival -- some of Eictv’s staff’s and students’ films were among Psff’s 22 Latino projects vying for the Cine Latino Prize being offered by Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara. This fact along shows a new unity of purpose among the Latino countries and their festivals (Cuba, Guadalajara and Palm Springs, which as part of the Coachella Valley, has the largest Latino population in the United States.) Among the 22 candidates for Psff’s Best Iberoamerican film were Clandestine Childhood (Argentina/ Brazil/Spain) by Benjamín Ávila, who was the coordinator of Fiction at Eictv and screenwriter Marcelo Muller also participated in Eictv; La Voz Dormida (España) of the emerging filmmaker Benito Zambrano, and 7 Boxes (Paraguay) co-directed by Juan Carlos Maneglia, a student in many of the workshops of Eictv. Eictv considers this exchange of ideas and talents as globally important.

The winners of Nuevas Miradas should be watched as one or several reach fruition. Last year The Visitor (Chile) won and has since raised the budget for a feature length film debut.

The projects, Un Viejo Traje, Moora Moora directed by Australian Rhiannon Stevens and produced by Chilean Esme Joffre, Tus padres volverán directed by Uruguayan Pablo Martínez and produced by Virginia Hinze, Cocodrilos tomando el sol, Cuerpos Celestes by Mexican director Lorena Padilla and producer Liliana Bravo, Revolución de las polleras by Bolivian director Sergio Estrada and producer Valeria Ponce received recognition and free software from Assimilate.

The documentary, Un Viejo Traje (aka The Old Suit), by Cuban director Damián Saínz (a student of Eictv) and producer Viana González received a $2,000 prize.

Fiction project, Cocodrilos tomando el sol, directed by Colombian Carlos Rojas and the Venezuelan producer Carolina Graterol, received a $1,000 prize and a course in directing at Eictv.

A film package for those interested in Cuban film programming

Ann Cross, a Scottish woman married to a Trinidadian is always in Havana. She programs the best selection of current Cuban features for U.K. distribution. This year she gave me this list of her favorites and many people concurred with her.

Y sin embargo (aka Nevertheless) by Rudy Mora also won the Beijing Film Festival prize which is surprising in that it is about school children challenging the school system, and challenging any systems in China (and perhaps in Cuba as well) is highly problematic. The child actors are exceptional. The type of burlesque comedy is typical of Cuba. Produced and Isa (international sales agent) is the Cuban government film group Icaic.

Irredemediablemente Juntos (aka Irredeemably Together) by Jorge Luis Sanchez Gonzalez is brave and challenging. Purportedly about classical music and Cuban music and the conflict between the two, it is really about race and the synthesis between black and white, Cuban and European Classical is reached in the story.

Cresciendo en la musica is about teaching music to children.

El sangre en la casa, en la escuela y en la calle (aka Blood in the House, in the School and in the Street) is a British-Cuban coproduction about Matanza, a town just outside of Havana where Cuban music roots are.

La piscine (aka The Swimming Pool) by Calvo Machado might not stand alone in the U.S. but would be good in a package.

Binchi by Eduardo Galano is about the 2 classes clashing in prison.

At the top of Ann’s list and on top of many others’ lists is Melaza.

What I saw and liked

It was also a time for me to catch up of Latin American cinema I have missed. My favorite was Chilean film Jueves a Domingo (aka from Thursday to Sunday) by Dominga Sotomayer. This road trip by a young couple and their 7 year old son and 11 year old daughter tells a story through the daughter’s eye of a loving family’s vacation and their father’s decision to move from Santiago to the countryside. We never know what he is getting away from (Pinochet?) but we see what is supposed to be a vacation transforms the family’s wholeness. The loving light touch of Sotomayer reminds me of Eric Rohmer’s four films of the seasons.

Lucie Malloy’s Una Noche was mobbed by the Cuban public wanting to see this film about two young defectors from Cuba; the police were called to break up the crowd and the overflow had a special screening set up. We hear that the young woman star who defected with her costar on the way to the Tribeca Film Festival and who landed up in Las Vegas is now in “exile mode” bewailing how she misses her family. La probrecita!! Yet another exile story. Had she waited a month, travel from Cuba would be legal. Una Noche is now here in Palm Springs as well, competitng for the Cine Latino Prize.

Other films I saw and liked

El Limpiador and Ombras were both without subtitles (as was Pablo Lorrain’s closing night film No) and so I could only watch a part of them. However I did see El Limpiador here in Palm Springs and was impressed with its simplicity and its authenticity and loving heart. A low tech take on a mysterious illness killing people in the Peruvian city of Lima, the film was simple, sometimes funny and in the end very satisfying.

A film which divided the audience neatly between men and women was the Brazilian feature Brecha Silencia (aka Breaching the Silence) about domestic violence from which 3 siblings barely escape. The subject of violence toward women was also the subject of a short which showed in every public screening. Called Ya No, this short Latin American backed PSA brings public awareness to the unacceptable violent behavior of men toward women often found in schools, in dating, and in homes.

Desde de Lucia playing in Palm Springs also takes on the subject of bullying, this time in a bourgeois Mexican school and centering on a teenage girl who has recently lost her mother.

Taken by Storm

The next segment of the festival was taken up with Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival (t+tff). Emilie Upszak, Artistic Director of t+tff, whom I had met in Havana last year through Icaic’s Luis Notario, and Bruce Paddington the founder and exec director of t+tff were in Havana with a delegation of filmmakers and their films. Since I had missed them all during the extraordinary experience I had at t+tff, I got to see Storm Saulter’s Better Mus Come which has been picked up by the new African Diaspora film distributor for U.S. Affrm (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement).

Storm is Jamaican and took film courses at L.A. Film School, that large private film school on Sunset near Vine, across from the Arclight Theater, where many foreign students go and where many vets go seeking to learn filmmaking. Storm, however, had been making films since he was a kid using super 8mm and at the ripe old age of 27, he has since formed a collective in Jamaica called, the New Caribbean Cinema. His new fiction feature Better Mus Come screened at Trinidad + Tobago film festival and showed here in Havana as well. He will be announcing an international sales agent and a U.S. distributor very soon.

What fun and interesting days and evenings and nights I had with the t+tff folks.

We heard live music, I danced salsa with a Puerto Rican Actor/ Director who dances salsa and has a short in the festival.

Salsa in Havana seems to be losing steam. Reggaeton closes every dance event as the drunken, monotonous final act before going home. However in Jamaica it is transforming itself into Dancehall (what could be more sexual than that except for sex itself?). There is also Rumba, the traditional dance of Afro-Cubans. It is now taking new forms as the newest generation of Cuba takes the stage. Woodbury faculty, in Havana on a hosted tour with the Jose Marti Cultural Institute, led by my friend Cookie Fischer were invited to the top of the Lincoln Hotel on the night the world was to end (remember the Mayan calendar prediction?) and we danced the night away to the live music of Septeto Nacional a 70 year old group. Son was my dance of choice there. For those of you who want to see Cuba before the transition is over, now is the time. You can travel legally from L.A. and Miami, Mexico or anywhere else in the world with a general license. Take advantage of it Now as it is going to get more crowded with tourists. For us film folk, we get a privileged perch, so plan on next December taking in a week of films plus another week or two to see a country whose land and people are unique in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Spanish Institute for Film and Audiovisual Arts (Icaa) a part of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, together with the American Cinematheque and Egeda (Audio-Visual Producers’ Rights Management Association) announce the 18th edition of Recent Spanish Cinema series that will showcase the most outstanding recent Spanish films at the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, October 11 – 14, 2012.

This 2012 series will be kicked off with the special opening premiere of the official Spanish Entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards 2013, Blancanieves (Snow White) directed by Pablo Berger and starring Maribel Verdú, Inma Cuesta & Macarena García.

This edition is honored with the attendance of directors Pablo Berger (Blancanieves), Benito Zambrano (The Sleeping Voice) and Patricia Ferreira (The Wild Ones).

Join us for our 18th annual showcase of the wildest, sexiest new films from Spain - on the big screen at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Included in this year's lineup are the 2012 Goya Best Film winner No Rest For The Wicked, a searing neo-noir from director Enrique Urbizu, starring Jose Coronado; Alberto Rodriguez's crime drama Unit 7 and Fernando Gonzalez Molina's coming of age drama and romance I Want You (the sequel to Three Steps Above Heaven, a selection from last year's Recent Spanish Cinema), both starring Spanish star Mario Casas. Also included are Ignacio Ferreras' stunning animated feature Wrinkles, based on Paco Roca’s comic of the same title; The Wild Ones, an elegant triptych of coming-of-age tales and winner of four awards at the Malaga Spanish Film Festival; and 2011’s much-lauded, multiple-Goya winner The Sleeping Voice, starring Maria Leon, Inma Cuesta, from director Benito Zambrano.

In addition to the lineup, the series will screen the short film Wings by José Villalobos, the winning entry from the New Filmmakers from Spain short film contest, a competition for Spanish film students living in USA.

For further details on the schedule, please check the Recent Spanish Cinema website

Venue: 6712 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028. Tickets: www.Fandango.com

Blancanieves (Snow White)

2012| Mama Films, Arcadia Motion Pictures, Motion Investment Group, Noodles Production|104 min.

Dir. Pablo Berger.

Cast: Maribel Verdú, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Ángela Molina, Inma Cuesta, Macarena García.

The Sleeping Voice (La Voz Dormida)

2011|Maestranza Films, Mirada Sur|128 min.

Dir. Benito Zambrano.

Cast: Inma Cuesta, María Leon, Marc Clotet, Daniel Holguín.

Unit 7 (Grupo 7)

2012|Atípica films, La Zanfoña Producciones, Sacromonte Films|96 min.

Dir. Alberto Rodríguez.

Cast: Mario Casas, Antonio de la Torre, Inma Cuesta.

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

2011|Perro Verde Films, Cromosoma |89 min.

Dir. Ignacio Ferreras

I Want You (Tengo Ganas De Ti)

2012|Zeta Audiovisual, Antena 3 Films|124 min.

Dir. Fernando González Molina.

Cast: Mario Casas, Clara Lago, María Valverde.

The Wild Ones (Els Nens Salvatges)

2012| Distinto Films, Aralan Films, La Femme Endormie Sarl |100 min.

Dir. Patricia Ferreira.

Cast: Marina Comas, Álex Monner, Albert Baró.

Experts in auteur cinema, German sales company The Match Factory have quite the sampling this year with names such as Thai Joe (Mekong Hotel – see pic above), Fatih Akin (Polluting Paradise) and Directors’ Fortnight invited The Dream and the Silence by Jamie Rosales proudly making us say ich liebe dich the label, and let us not forget Loznitsa’s In the Fog which is being featured in the Main Comp category.

In The Fog (V Tumane) by Sergei Loznitsa

Mekong Hotel by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Polluting Paradise (MÜLL Im Garten Eden) by Fatih Akin

The Dream And The Silence (SUEÑO Y Silencio) by Jaime Rosales

And If We All Lived Together (Et Si On Vivait Tous Ensemble) by Stéphane Robelin

Barbara by Christian Petzold

Home For The Weekend (Was Bleibt) by Hans-Christian Schmid

In The Name Of The Girl (En El Nombre De La Hija) by Tania Hermida

Just The Wind...

No Rest for the Wicked (No habrá paz para los malvados) and the other winners for the 2012 Goya Awards (Premios Goyas) have been announced. The 26th Annual Goya Awards (Premios Goyas), presented by the Academia de las Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas de España (Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences), is “Spain’s main national film awards, considered by many in Spain, and internationally, to be the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards.”

The full listing of the 2012 Goya Awards (Premios Goyas) winners is below.

Film

No habrá paz para los malvados (No Rest for the Wicked), Enrique Urbizu

Director

Enrique Urbizu, No habrá paz para los malvados (No Rest for the Wicked)

New Director

Kike Maillo, Eva

Original Screenplay

Enrique Urbizu and Michel Gaztambide, No habrá paz para los malvados (No Rest for the Wicked)

Adapted Screenplay

Angel de la Cruz, Ignacio Ferreras, Paco Roca and Rosanna Cecchini,...

Elena Anaya, Antonio Banderas, The Skin I Live In No Rest For The Wicked Tops, Pedro Almodóvar Empty-Handed: Goyas 2012 Winners Best Film La Piel que habito / The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodóvar * No habrá paz para los malvados / No Rest for the Wicked, Enrique Urbizu La Voz dormida / The Sleeping Voice, Benito Zambrano Blackthorn. Sin destino / Blackthorn, Mateo Gil Best Foreign Film in the Spanish Language Boleto al paraíso (Cuba), Gerardo Chijona Miss Bala (Mexico), Gerardo Naranjo * Un cuento chino / Chinese Take-Away (Argentina), Sebastián Borensztein Violeta se fue a los cielos (Chile), Andrés Wood Best European Film Jane Eyre (United Kingdom), Cary Fukunaga Melancholia (Germany / Denmark / France), Lars von Trier * The Artist (France), Michel Hazanavicius Carnage (France), Roman Polanski Best Director Pedro Almodóvar, The Skin I Live In Benito Zambrano, The Sleeping Voice * Enrique Urbizu, No Rest for the Wicked Mateo Gil, Blackthorn Best New Director Paula Ortiz, De tu ventana a la mía...

The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito) and the other nominations for the 2012 Goya Awards (Premios Goyas) have been announced. The 26th Annual Goya Awards (Premios Goyas), presented by the Academia de las Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas de España (Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences), is “Spain’s main national film awards, considered by many in Spain, and internationally, to be the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards.” The awards will be handed out on February 19, 2012 in Madrid, Spain.

The full listing of the 2012 Goya Awards (Premios Goyas) nominations is below.

Film

La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In), Pedro Almodovar

No habrá paz para los malvados (No Rest for the Wicked), Enrique Urbizu

La voz dormida (The Sleeping Voice), Benito Zambrano

Blackthorn. Sin destino (Blackthorn), Mateo Gil

Director

Pedro Almodovar, La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In)

Benito Zambrano, La voz dormida...

Last week we broke out news about the international lineup for the official section of the 59th San Sebastian Film Festival. Today we receive word on the Spanish titles that would be showcased at this year's edition including the latest from Enrique Urbizu, Isaki Lacuesta and Nacho Vigalondo (see pic). Competing for the Golden Shell award at the official section we find: “No HABRÁ Paz Para Los Malvados (No Rest For The Wicked)” from Enrique Urbizu, starring José Coronado, Rodolfo Sancho, Helena Miquel and Juanjo Artero. The comeback of one of the most gripping Spanish film noir directors after an eight year absence.“Los Pasos Dobles (The Double Steps)” from Isaki Lacuesta, a fictional documentary taking its inspiration from the biography of French artist and author François Augiéras. The artist painted every inch of the walls of a military bunker in the desert and let it sink into the sand...