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In “Dismantling an Elephant,” Spanish director Aitor Echeverría delivers an exploration of addiction’s ripple effects within a family, framed through an intimate mother-daughter dynamic. The film stars Emma Suárez, a triple Goya winner known for Pedro Almodóvar’s “Julieta,” and Natalia de Molina, who has claimed two Goyas, including one for “Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.” Co-stars include Darío Grandinetti (“Talk to Her”) and Alba Guilera.

For both of the film’s lead actors, Echeverría’s vision and the script were immediate draws. “It had such an original cinematic take on addiction, the story was told in a subtle way and the visual language was very elegant,” Suárez tells Variety. “And then, meeting Aitor, the director. He transmitted a lot of confidence and put a lot of faith in our work.”

De Molina echoes her co-star’s sentiment, explaining that her journey with the film began years ago.

Huelva’s main Competition titles, all premieres in Spain, pick up on big festival standouts that still merit further attention. Some brief details:

“Bionico’s Bachata”

Bionico’s Bachata

The film which won Morales, production house Mentes Fritas and producer and co-writer Cristián Monica a South by Southwest 2024 Audience Award. A mockumentary, shot in a box format, Biónico, an equally hopeless romantic and crack addict, battles to clean up his act and make some cash before his fiancée arrives back from rehab. A “romantic story in a hostile Caribbean city” about a “serious topic but handled via the absurd and dark comedy that we have in our culture,” Morales has told Variety.

“El Cuento del Lobo”

The latest from López Amado, a director on big Spanish TV series such as “El Principe” and “The Time In Between,” plus notable films from upscale supernatural thriller “Nos Miran” (2002), his first feature, to...

Spanish production-sales-distribution house Filmax has boarded “Dismantling an Elephant,” the latest film from Barcelona-based Arcadia Motion Pictures, producer of Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s foreign-language Cesar winner “The Beasts” and Academy Award-nominated animated feature “Robot Dreams.”

Sold outside Spain by Filmax, “Dismantling an Elephant” toplines Emma Suárez, the triple Goya-winning star of Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta,” and Natalia de Molina, who has won two Goyas, one for David Trueba’s “Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed,”which swept the Spanish Academy 2014 Goya Awards

At this week’s American Film Market, Filmax will show buyers a trailer of the film, which is currently finalising post-production.

“Dismantling an Elephant” looks to offer Suárez the typically gutsy role in which she excels, playing a mother trapped by both a close bond to her daughter, which is also a source of conflict, and a day-to-day life whose elephant in the room is her own addiction, which nobody mentions,...

Un crimen en los yacimientos de Atapuerca. © Julia Carballada

Ha finalizado el rodaje de La huella del mal, la adaptación cinematográfica de la novela de Manuel Ríos San Martín que él mismo dirige.

La huella del mal comienza con una macabra sorpresa durante una visita escolar al Centro de Arqueología Experimental (Carex). Un grupo de estudiantes descubre el cuerpo sin vida de la visita guiada de una joven en el lugar donde debería estar la réplica de un enterramiento neandertal. La joven es Eva Santos, una chica del pueblo cercano de Atapuerca, y está muerta. Su cuerpo está desnudo y colocado en posición fetal. Un espeluznante crimen ritual que recuerda a otro ocurrido hace seis años en la misma zona. ¿Habrá regresado el “asesino del yacimiento”, que consiguió escapar hace seis años?

La película está protagonizada por Blanca Suárez y Daniel Grao. Completan el reparto Aria Bedmar (Hermana muerte), Víctor Palmero...

Pedro Almodóvar is the next recipient of Film at Lincoln Center’s prestigious Chaplin Award.

The Oscar-winning writer-director will be celebrated at a gala event featuring excerpts of his work and appearances by co-stars, friends and colleagues at Lincoln Center on April 28, 2025.

The announcement was made ahead of the U.S. premiere and New York Film Festival centerpiece gala screening of Almodóvar’s first English-language feature film The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.

The Room Next Door won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival and is set to open in L.A. and New York on Dec. 20 before expanding to select cities on Dec. 25 and going nationwide in January.

One of Spain’s most celebrated filmmakers, Almodóvar’s feature films include Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988); Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989); All About My Mother (1999), which won the...

Film at Lincoln Center (Flc) has announced that internationally acclaimed Spanish film director, screenwriter, and author Pedro Almodóvar is the recipient of the 50th Chaplin Award. He will be honored during a gala evening at Lincoln Center on April 28, 2025.

The announcement was made this evening by Flc President Lesli Klainberg prior to the 62nd New York Film Festival Centerpiece premiere of Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, “The Room Next Door,” which won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival and opens at Flc on December 20.

Per this evening’s official announcement, “Internationally recognized for his spirited and bold storytelling with a distinctive and colorful visual style, Pedro Almodóvar is one of Spain’s most celebrated filmmakers. His work is characterized by a blend of humor and melodrama and his ability to create resonant, emotional stories often centered around the lives of strong and fearless women. He has...

Just because “The Room Next Door” is in English doesn’t make it any less of a Pedro Almodóvar movie. It’s visually sumptuous, as always, bathed in saturated colors. It’s an intense, heightened drama about one woman facing death (Tilda Swinton) while her close friend (Julianne Moore) supports her journey. The Spanish director was in control, as always, even when he occasionally lost an argument with his actresses.

The 75-year-old auteur was moved by the film’s warm reception in Venice, where the jury awarded it the Golden Lion. But the fear of moving into a new language was always there.

Almodóvar had first considered shooting an English-language project with Meryl Streep, a version of “Julieta” (2016). He wrestled with how to adapt Canadian Alice Munro’s three short stories into English. He decided he’d rather set the story in Spain.

“If I would know what we all know now,...

Fresh from winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his English-language debut “The Room Next Door,” Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar moved closer to home to the San Sebastian Film Festival — a festival very close to his heart — to celebrate both the film and his receiving of the event’s highest honor, the Donostia Award for career achievement.

Speaking at the press conference on Thursday, Almodovar said that his very first feature “Pepi, Luci, Bon” first premiered at San Sebastián in 1980 and that since arriving at the festival on Wednesday — which also happened to be his 74th birthday — he’d been overwhelmed with an “just an enormous amount of emotion” as he reflected on 44 years of filmmaking since then and the impact the festival had had on his career.

“I couldn’t stop crying and had tears running down my cheeks,” he said. “It’s been much more...

Oscar-winning Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar has made a name for himself with a series of brightly colored, delightfully kinky and unabashedly melodramatic titles, mixing comedy, drama, sex and violence to great success. He shows no signs of slowing down, with his latest outing in 2019 being the Oscar-nominated “Pain and Glory.” Let’s take a look back at all 22 of his films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1949 in Spain, Almodovar came to prominence during La Movida Madrilena, a cultural renaissance that blossomed at the end of Francoist Spain. Staring with his filmmaking debut “Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom” (1980), the openly gay director showed an affinity for oddballs and outsiders, populating his films with transvestites, transexuals and homosexuals, all of whom had previously been relegated to the closet. He also showed a talent for working with women, and throughout his 40 year career has placed actresses such as Penelope Cruz,...

Elegant and confounding in equivalent measure, Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature could’ve used a finishing touch from an American script supervisor. Adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s novel “What Are You Going Through” — and the second mounting of a Nunez book this fall season alongside David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s “The Friend” — “The Room Next Door” is mannered in a way that doesn’t feel purposeful, stilted and stiff where it should be sumptuous, and aches of the feeling that the Spanish auteur passed his sensibility, and his script, through a direct-to-English transferal that lacks the nuances that, say, a bilingual literary translator would bring to a text brought from Europe to the United States. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, playing longtime friends who reunite as the latter decides to give up stage-three cancer treatment to choose euthanasia instead, move and speak as if in different films.

Moore...

Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door,” starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, deals with a controversial topic: euthanasia.

Marking Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, “The Room Next Door” stars the two Oscar winners as Ingrid (Moore) and Martha (Swinton), who were close friends in their youth when they worked at the same magazine. After years of separation, they meet again when Martha is diagnosed with a terminal illness and decides to take her life into her own hands.

During the film’s Venice Film Festival press conference on Monday, the Spanish auteur spoke passionately about addressing the subject in the film and why he thinks it should be an option for those facing the same fate.

“This movie is in favor of euthanasia,” he said, speaking in Spanish. “It is something we admire about the character of Tilda, she decides that getting rid of cancer can only be done...

Un crimen en los yacimientos de Atapuerca. © Julia Carballada

Ha comenzado en Burgos el rodaje de La huella del mal, la adaptación cinematográfica de la novela de Manuel Ríos San Martín que él mismo dirige.

La huella del mal Durante comienza con una macabra sorpresa durante una visita escolar al Centro de Arqueología Experimental (Carex). Un grupo de estudiantes descubre el cuerpo sin vida de la visita guiada de una joven en el lugar donde debería estar la réplica de un enterramiento neandertal. La joven es Eva Santos, una chica del pueblo cercano de Atapuerca, y está muerta. Su cuerpo está desnudo y colocado en posición fetal. Un espeluznante crimen ritual que recuerda a otro ocurrido hace seis años en la misma zona. ¿Habrá regresado el “asesino del yacimiento”, que consiguió escapar hace seis años?

La película está protagonizada por Blanca Suárez y Daniel Grao. Completan el reparto Aria Bedmar...

1980 war Pedro Almodóvar erstmals mit einem Film auf dem San Sebastian Film Festival vertreten. Bei der vom 20. bis 28. September stattfindenden 72. Ausgabe des Festivals wird er mit dem Donostia Award geehrt.

Pedro Almodóvar wird beim San Sebastian Film Festival mit dem Donostia Award geehrt (Credit: El Deseo Da S.L.U. – El Deseo da S.L.U. / Iglesias Más)

Der spanische Regisseur, Drehbuchautor und Produzent Pedro Almodóvar wird am 26. September im Rahmen des 72. San Sebastian Film Festival (20. bis 28. September) mit dem Donostia Award geehrt, mit dem das Festival einen außergewöhnlichen Beitrag zur Welt des Kinos würdigt. Wie das Festival heute mitteilt, wird Almodovar die Auszeichnung vor einem Screening seines aktuellen, ersten englischsprachigen Films „The Room Next Door“ erhalten. Überreicht wird ihm der Donostia Award von Tilda Swinton, neben Julianne Moore Hauptdarstellerin des Films über zwei Freundinnen, die den seit einigen Jahren abgerissenen Kontakt zueinander wieder aufnehmen und dabei tief in ihre Vergangenheit eintauchen.

Tilda Swinton Julianne Moore in The Room Next Door Photo: Iglesias Más Film at Lincoln Center has announced that Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton with John Turturro, Alex Høgh Andersen and Alessandro Nivola, will be the Centerpiece selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival. RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys and Steve McQueen’s Blitz are the Opening and Closing Night gala selections.

Almodóvar has a long and honoured history with the festival. Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (NYFF26) was the Opening Night selection, and he also opened NYFF with All About My Mother (NYFF37). Bad Education (NYFF42) and Volver (NYFF44) were selected as Centerpieces, and Live Flesh (NYFF35), Talk To Her (NYFF40), Broken Embraces (NYFF47), and Parallel Mothers (NYFF59) were Closing Night selections. Additional NYFF selections include The Flower Of My Secret (NYFF33), The Skin I Live In...

After just wrapping production a few months ago, Pedro Almodóvar is already putting the finishing touches on his next feature. Following Venice Film Festival’s announcement of a world premiere for The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, it’s now been unveiled as the Centerpiece selection for the 62nd New York Film Festival, making its U.S. premiere at Alice Tully Hall on October 4.

Here’s the synopsis: “Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a best-selling writer, rekindles her relationship with her friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war journalist with whom she has lost touch for a number of years. The two women immerse themselves in their pasts, sharing memories, anecdotes, art, movies—yet Martha has a request that will test their newly strengthened bond. Pedro Almodóvar’s finely sculpted drama, his first English-language feature, is the unmistakable work of a master filmmaker, a hushed and humane portrayal of...

First Madrid, then New York, then Venice, and now: the New York Film Festival.

Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door,” which shot earlier this year on-location in Madrid and Manhattan, will play the New York Film Festival (NYFF) as its Centerpiece on October 4. NYFF has billed the melodrama, starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, as a U.S. premiere, which means New York is the next destination for Almodóvar’s first English-language feature after world-premiering in the Venice competition. That also means no Telluride screening, but it could still show up in Toronto for a North American premiere. The NYFF presentation of “The Room Next Door” will take place at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.

Here’s a more detailed synopsis than we’ve seen before, courtesy of NYFF: “Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a best-selling writer, rekindles her relationship with her friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war journalist with...

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, will receive its U.S. premiere as the centerpiece selection for the 2024 New York Film Festival on Oct. 4.

The film, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, marks Spanish auteur Almodóvar’s first English-language feature and follows best-selling writer Ingrid (Moore) and Martha (Swinton) as they rekindle their friendship after losing touch. As they immerse themselves in past memories, anecdotes, art and movies, Martha makes a request that will test their renewed bond.

“I am delighted that The Room Next Door will be the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival,” said Almodóvar. “This festival has been my bridge to New York audiences for decades, so it only felt natural that the two protagonists go see a film at the Alice Tully Hall in one of the scenes of the movie. It...

Narra la historia real de Enric Marco, un hombre que fingió haber sido prisionero en un campo de concentración nazi. © BTeamPictures

“Marco”, la película de Aitor Arregi y Jon Garaño, tendrá su estreno mundial en el Festival Internacional de Cine de Venecia, donde competirá en la sección Orizzonti.

Basada en una historia real, “Marco” sigue a Enric Marco, un deportado que nunca existió. Un hombre que durante años fue capaz de mantener, ante la opinión pública y su propia familia, una mentira difícil de imaginar: que había sido prisionero en un campo de concentración nazi. Carismático y convincente, Marco ascendió a la presidencia de la Asociación Española de Víctimas del Holocausto, donde se convirtió en una figura destacada y admirada por su supuesta valentía y sufrimiento. Hasta que un día un historiador descubre que su relato es completamente falso.

La película está protagonizada por Eduard Fernández como Enric Marco. Completan...

Una comedia gamberra dirigida por Fer García-Ruiz. © Filmax

Se ha publicado el tráiler oficial de “Mala Persona”, una nueva comedia española, dirigida por Fer García-Ruiz (“Descarrilados”).

“Mala Persona” sigue a Pepe (Valls), querido por todos sin excepción. Es el ángel del barrio. Ese ser humano al que te llevarías a casa. Pero un día recibe la terrible noticia, esa que nadie quiere recibir: le quedan pocos meses de vida. Pepe, “fenomenalmente” aconsejado por su mejor amigo, decide pasarse al lado oscuro de la conducta humana. Una historia gamberra que narra cómo Pepe decide convertirse en un ser deleznable para que su familia y amigos no lo echen de menos cuando ya no esté.

La comedia está protagonizada por Arturo Valls, Malena Alterio (“Que Nadie Duerma”), Julián Villagrán (“Operación Camarón”) y cuenta también con la colaboración especial de José Corbacho. Completan el reparto Víctor Benjumea (“El Ministerio del Tiempo”), Teresa Lozano...

That sweet and innocent-looking friendly neighborhood Spider-Man guy from Marvel, who rampaged about spilling spoilers during interviews out of excitement, seems to be gone now. Looking at Tom Holland in the latest look for his Romeo & Juliet play seems a lot different than his usual happy-go-lucky ones. In fact, he feels completely different after witnessing him with his on-stage love interest for the play, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers.

Tom Holland in a still from The Devil All The Time.

However, fans aren’t clamoring in support of this duo, especially for their pairing up for the stage as the iconic couple from Shakespeare’s lore. This comes after the first look images of Holland and Amewudah-Rivers as their respective characters were released, which, unarguably, have been garnering quite a bit of sarcastic and terribly negative reviews and backlash from fans.

Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ First Look as Romeo and Juliet...

Alice Munro, the Nobel and prize-winning Canadian author of short story collections and novels including “Lives of Girls and Women” and “The Love of a Good Woman,” died Monday night at her home in Ontario, the New York Times reported. She was 92

Munro won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2013 for her short stories, the Man Booker International prize in 2009 and the O’Henry award in 2012. Born Alice Laidlaw in Ontario, Canada, she often wrote about women living in small towns in the province.

The Booker jury wrote in its prize statement, “Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.”

Several of Munro’s stories were adapted for film and television,...

Sony Pictures Classics is reuniting with Pedro Almodovar and will release the cinematic legend’s first English-language feature film, “The Room Next Door.”

The indie studio announced it has acquired all rights in North America, the Middle East, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to the film, which is set to star Oscar winners Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, along with John Turturro. The film will begin shooting this March in New York and Madrid. Almodovar has been thinking of directing an English-language feature for some time — at one point, he considered making 2016’s “Julieta” with Meryl Streep.

The news about the distribution deal is wholly expected (it would be more shocking if Almodovar found a different partner). That’s because Sony Pictures Classics has released nearly all of Almodovar’s movies. Most recently, it oversaw the distribution of “Parallel Mothers,” which earned an Oscar nomination for Penélope Cruz.

A bio-series about iconic ranchera singer Chavela Vargas starring “La Reina del Sur” lead Kate del Castillo is in the works. Colombia’s Caracol Televisión and indie Miracol Media are co-producing “Chavela,” which will trace the tumultuous life and career of the legendary singer.

Del Castillo will transform into Vargas, the mythical woman in the red poncho, who boldly rejected the conventions of her time, paving the way for a unique and groundbreaking journey in the landscape of Mexican popular music.

Her internal battle with personal demons, heartbreak, and alcoholism propelled her to become a trailblazer, stepping onto the stage to sing Mexican songs in a jorongo, the traditional Mexican poncho, and pants. With a guitar pressed against her heart, a tequila in hand, and a pistol holstered on her belt, she mesmerized audiences, captivating both men and women alike.

“I came out of hell, but I did it singing,...

Almudena Amor stars in female-led story.

Paul Hudson’s Outsider Pictures is at AFM with worldwide rights to the feminist genre film Ancestral from Pablo Aragüés and Marta Cabrera.

Almudena Amor (Sitges and London 2021 entry The Grandmother) stars in the Spanish-language, female-led story about Carla, a pregnant woman who returns to her childhood town where she reunites with her mother and a group of women who seem to be the only inhabitants.

However they are not alone, and Carla is forced to delve into her past to confront an ancestral curse and liberate the women of the town.

The cast...

Chile’s Bf Distribution, among the leading distributors in Latin America, has picked up Latin American and Spanish distribution rights to “El Silencio de Marcos Tremmer” with Bf Distribution partners Carlos Hansen and Matias Cardone of Invercine Chile boarding the pic as executive producers.

Shot in the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Madrid, it was helmed by Spanish director Miguel García de la Calera and is currently in post.

The film stars Benjamín Vicuña, Adriana Ugarte (Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta”), Daniel Hendler (a Berlin best actor winner for “Lost Embrace”) and Felix Gomez (“La caza”).

“Given its A-list cast of Latin American and Spanish talent, we plan to release it next year in Chile, Argentina and Spain to start,” said Cardone.

Vicuña plays Marcos Tremmer, a prosperous Uruguayan ad executive residing in Madrid, who is madly in love with his wife, Lucía (Ugarte). However, one day, Marcos uncovers a grim truth...

Pedro Almodóvar’s canon abounds in nimble, yet edgy, remembrances of things past. In Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, and Volver, he paid homage to the language of melodrama while crafting his own version of it. Those and many of his earlier films are pervaded with a humor toward the power that the most basic elements of drama have when pushed to their aesthetic, emotional, and formal limits.

Lately, though, Almodóvar’s work feels less bent on metatexually displaying his technical adroitness than his increasingly softer look at memory. Julieta, Pain and Glory, Parallel Mothers, and even his 2020 short The Human Voice are less fixated on accentuating the theatrical than stewing in nostalgia. And if his new short, Strange Way of Life, is any indication, each subsequent work in his filmography is proving the broth is losing a layer of flavor.

Perhaps the...

Pulsar Content has closed a raft of major deals on “La Maison,” Anissa Bonnefont’s erotic drama based on Emma Becker’s controversial bestselling novel chronicling the young author’s two-year undercover experience working as a sex worker at a Berlin brothel.

The Paris-based company introduced the title to buyers at Cannes and sold it to Wild Bunch for Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain, among other deals.

Wild Bunch will team with Capelight for the German release. The film will be handled by Wild Bunch subsidiaries in Italy and Spain, Bim Distribuzione and Vertigo, respectively. Other territories closed include Singapore (Shaw), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo Audiovisuais), and the Baltics (Garsu Pasaulio Irasai). Pulsar Content is in talks to lock further deals.

“I’m excited to take on this ambitious, well crafted and daring film accross our European territories. ‘La Maison found its home,'” said Wild Bunch’s Marc Gabizon.

Pulsar...

“El agua,” (Elena López Riera)

A Directors’ Fortnight title, the feature debut of Locarno winning López Riera (“Los Que Desean”), a fantasy-laced village-set critique of gender violence. S.A. Elle Driver

“Alcarràs,” (Carla Simón)

The 2022 Berlin Golden Bear winner, Simón’s follow-up to “Summer 1993” and the flagship title for Catalonia and Spain’s newest filmmaking generation. S.A. MK2 Films

“Amazing Elisa,” (Sádrac González-Perellón)

The next from 2017 BiFan Grand Jury Prize winner González-Perellón (“Black Hollow Cage”), once more mixing fantasy and family dynamics as Elisa, 12, plans revenge after her mother’s tragic death. S.A. Filmax

“The Beasts,” (Rodrigo Sorogoyen)

One of 2022’s most awaited Spanish titles, playing Cannes Premiere, a Galicia-set thriller from Oscar-nominee Sorogoyen (“Mother”), produced by Arcadia, Caballo Films and Le Pacte. S.A. Latido Films

“The Communion Girl,” (Víctor García)

A revenge thriller involving an urban legend about a girl in a communion dress. S.

Pulsar Content has boarded Anissa Bonnefont’s erotic drama “La Maison” based on Emma Becker’s controversial bestselling novel chronicling the young author’s two-year undercover experience working as a sex worker at a Berlin brothel.

Now in post-production, “La Maison” is headlined by Ana Girardot, the rising French star of “The Returned,” “Back to Burgundy” and “Escobar: Paradise Lost,” as well as Rossy De Palma and Aure Atika (“10 Days With Dad”). De Palma will also be at Cannes to preside over the jury of the Golden Camera Award.

Pulsar Content has secured worldwide sales and unveiling a first still of the movie (pictured above). The outfit will introduce the project to buyers at Cannes with a promo reel. Rezo will distribute “La Maison” in France.

Radar Films, a Mediawan company whose credits include “Vicky and her Mystery,” “The Deep House” and “Divorce Club” is producing the movie with and Belgian banner uMedia co-producing.

Unspooling March 21-25, the Malaga Festival Fund & Co-Production Event project (Maff) provides a forum for Latin American film projects to seek international production partnerships. Costa Rican productions will be highlighted by subsection Costa Rica Guest Country.

The socially impactful film “Silence of the Earth” will feature in the Maff Social subsection. Female directors earn special emphasis in the Women Screen Industry section.

Following, the profiles of Maff production.

“All My Journey Are Journeys of Return,”

A time-jumping, genre-blending “delirious adventure,” say its makers, from Los Niños Films and Vorágine, currently in production on the World Cinema Fund-backed “Carropasajero.” It depicts a journey which begins in the Rio Magdalena, in the early 19th century, during a search for poet Gaspar de la Noche, who has gone missing in northern Sweden. Carolina Zarate produces.

“Before the Memory,”

Shepherded by Agustina Chiarino, one of Uruguay’s most ambitious film producers, González’s...

As other European TV giants such as the Rtl Group, Spain’s Atresmedia, owner of the Ott service Atresplayer Premium, is finding the sweet spot between auteur and broad audience shows.

Launched two years ago, Atresplayer Premium boasts fast growth in terms of subscriptions – reaching 400,000 users in Spain alone – and content production volume, readying some 20 new TV projects for this year.

Promoting original voices, the platform is winning international visibility. Iconic original series “Veneno,” created by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, “Los Javis,” successfully launched on HBO Max in the U.S. and Latin America, with a strong impact on the international media, which contributed to strengthening the Atresplayer brand.

Now, “Cardo,” from creators and writers Claudia Costafreda and Ana Rujas, executive produced by Los Javis after becoming one of the hottest indie series of last year for TV critics and audiences, is close to an important international distribution deal.

Exclusive: Musician and filmmaker Flying Lotus has set the sci-fi horror film Ash as his second feature, on the heels of his body horror anthology Kuso, which made its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

The new film, for which the multi-hyphenate will also compose an original score, watches as a woman wakes up on a distant planet and finds the crew of her space station viciously killed, her investigation into what happened setting in motion a terrifying chain of events.

Jonni Remmler penned the original screenplay. XYZ Films and Gfc Films will produce, with Echo Lake on board as exec producer. XYZ is also financing and handling worldwide sales. Casting will get underway later this month, with production slated for this summer.

Ash follows XYZ’s collaboration with Gfc on Toa Fraser’s New Zealand Oscar entry The Dead Lands, which was presented to the U.S. market by James Cameron,...

Hailed in its day as Spain’s own “Downton Abbey,” period espionage drama “The Time In Between” (“El tiempo entre costuras”), a huge hit in Spain, has been sold to South Korea in a deal between Atresmedia International Sales and Germany-based distributor Jung Consulting.

The series will air this January in South Korea on Smile TV Plus, TVasia Plus and WeeTV.

“We are delighted to be distributing such a successful Spanish series in Korea, together with Atresmedia. We trust the Korean audience will enjoy the series, and that it will allow us to bring more international Spanish series to Korea,” said Woojae Jung, Jung Consulting managing director.

An Atresmedia TV original series about a spying seamstress first released in Oct. 2013, “The Time in Between” went up against “The Voice” and historical hit “Isabel,” averaging an extraordinary 25.5% share and almost 5 million viewers on Antena 3. It made a star out of Adriana Ugarte,...

The Lives of Mothers: Almodovar’s Melodrama Mines the Personal and Political

Coincidences abound in Parallel Mothers, the latest soap dish from Spain’s perennial auteur, Pedro Almodóvar. As the title indicates, favored motifs celebrating women and motherhood abound in a narrative which eventually has more bite than bark for the filmmaker’s boldest and most vibrant offering since 2011’s The Skin I Live In. While recent titles like Julieta (2015) and Pain & Glory (2019) concern protagonists forced to contend with painful memories from their past, Almodóvar widens the scope considerably in a sometimes tenuous deliberation on Spain’s wounds from the 1930s civil war.…...

Something strange happened to Penélope Cruz as she rehearsed on the set of “Parallel Mothers.” Whenever the crew would come to collect the doll she was using as a stand-in for a flesh-and-blood baby, Cruz tensed up. She became combative. It didn’t matter that it was only a toy — she refused to surrender her child.

“It freaked me out,” remembers Cruz. “When the prop department would take the doll, I went psycho. It was my baby. I felt something deep in myself that was like if you take the fucking doll from me, I’m going to hit you.”

That primal instinct and protective flame would serve Cruz well when it came to putting “Parallel Mothers,” the story of two women whose children are switched at birth, on the screen. The film, which marks her eighth collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar, is one of the most psychologically rich and surprising of their partnerships,...

No event in the world offers a broader spread of recent movies from Spain than the Malaga de Cine – Spanish Screenings. Unspooling online over Oct. 20-22, this year’s lineup offers buyers a chance to catch up with titles at San Sebastian, as well as upcoming releases, 2021 Malaga fest winners and its pix-in-post panorama. At the heart of the event are its Screenings, new or newish titles which in an ordinary onsite year would play in cinema theaters in Malaga. Variety drills down on a score of films playing at this year’s event, including a clutch of notable debuts.

“All the Moons,” (Arcadia Motion Pictures, Kowalski Films, Pris & Batty, Ilargia Films, Noodles Production)

A fantasy vampire period drama, set in 19th century Spain during its Carlist wars. Bullish sales prospects. Sales agency: Filmax

“Ama,” (Julia de Paz Solvas, La Dalia Films)

Paz Solvas’ first feature and a Malaga best...

Spain’s San Sebastian Festival, the most important film meet in the Spanish-speaking world, has unveiled the 13 title lineup of its 2021 New Directors lineup, which includes awaited debuts such as Argentine Mara Pescio’s “That Weekend” and Spaniard Javier Marco’s “Josephine” plus Jeonju Fest double winner “Aloners.”

Here are the titles and some descriptions. More details to come:

“Aloners”

Winner at May’s Jeonju Intl. Film Festival of the best actor prize for Gong Seung-yeon who plays a loner woman working at a customer call center who discourages any social contact. A psychological study in solitariness, “Aloners” also scooped the Cgv Arthouse award.

“Between Two Dawns”

A standout and eventual double winner at San Sebastian’s 2020 Wip Europa, Nacar’s debut, about a man struggling to do the right thing following an accident in his family’s business.

“Carajita”

Set in the Dominican Republic and the Argentine directorial duo’s follow-up to 2017 “Tigre,...

Paris-based Charades Films has boarded Carlota Pereda’s rural thriller “Piggy” (“Cerdita”), one of the most awaited feature debuts of the year from Spain.

Written and directed by Pereda, “Piggy” is produced by Morena Films and France’s Backup Media, the outfit behind “Still Alice,” “Submergence” and Ari Folman’s Cannes entry “Where Is Anne Frank.” Charades will handle world sales rights on “Piggy,” while Filmax, a frequent backer of first time directors, will distribute the film in Spain.

Starring Laura Galán, Richard Holmes and Carmen Machi, “Piggy” expands on Pereda’s short of the same title which marked her breakthrough as a film director and won 90 awards, including the Spanish Academy Goya Award for best short film in 2019, the José María Forqué Award for best fiction short and a Slamdance Russo Brothers Fellowship.

Though “Piggy” represents her feature debut, Pereda has an extensive C.V. as a director and writer.

Pedro Almodóvar has wrapped production on his new feature, “Madres paralelas (Parallel Mothers),” which only started filming in March under strict Covid safety protocols. The film is notable for reuniting the Oscar winner with several of his longtime muses, including Penélope Cruz (their last movie together was 2019’s Cannes winner “Pain and Glory”) and Rossy de Palma (who got her acting start with three Almodóvar movies between 1987 and 1989 and last appeared in the director’s 2016 melodrama “Julieta”). Production company El Deseo celebrated the end of production by releasing first look photos from “Madres” and a behind-the-scenes video from the Covid safety set (see both below).

Joining Cruz and de Palma in the cast are “Veneno” actor Israel Elejalde and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” star Julieta Serrano, plus Aitana Sánchez-Gijón and Milena Smit. Per Variety, the story centers on three mother characters played by Cruz, Gijón and Smit.

Adriana Ugarte, star of hit Spanish TV drama “The Time in Between” and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Julieta,” will play the lead role in Atresmedia original series “Madre.”

A remake of successful Turkish TV drama “Anne,” in turn an adaptation of Japanese series “Mother,” “Madre” continues Spanish media conglomerate Atresmedia’s bet on re-versioning recent standout Turkish scripted series. This strategy kicked-off with “Alba,” the Elena Rivera-starring redo of female empowerment skein “Fatmagul,” a modern Turkish classic.

A 13-hour series, “Madre” is produced by Atresmedia TV in collaboration with Buendía Estudios, the joint-venture launched last year by Atresmedia and Telefonica-owned pay TV operator Movistar Plus.

Scheduled to premiere this year on Atresmedia’s SVOD service Atresplayer Premium and then launch on the group’s core channel Antena 3 in Spanish TV primetime, “Madre” will follow the same release windowing as “Alba,” which bowed in March on Atresplayer and now awaits a free-to-air TV debut.

At one of its increasingly regular presentations, on Thursday Netflix Spain unveiled seven new projects including “If Only,” a Spanish adaptation of the Netflix Turkish original canceled before shooting by Turkish authorities.

Where once Netflix would host its presentations early in the year and announce its ambitions for the next 12 months, the platform’s original Spanish programming pipeline has grown to an extent that Thursday’s showcase only covers the next few months and hinted at plenty more to come in late 2021.

In both level and volume of production, the day’s announcements confirm Netflix as one of if not the, foremost investors in original Spanish series and movies, at the same as its talent pool is expanding to include ever more of the principal producers in Spain. New Netflix originals are now being produced by now-regular partners Nostromo, producers of “The Minions of Midas”; “Élite” producers Zeta Studios; “Money Heist...

Gracia Querejeta’s “The Invisible,” toplining Emma Suárez, star of Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta,” and Toni Bestard’s “Pullman” have been acquired for international sales by Feel Content.

They will be made available for online access to buyers as part of next week’s Malaga Festival’s Spanish Screenings Market Premieres showcase, one of the industry event’s main draws.

A distinguished director of now 10 increasingly varied features – including 2017 dark melodrama “Happy 140” and doc feature “Tanto Monta,” and 2018’s absurdist thriller “Crime Wave” – “The Invisible” sees Querejeta returning to her more observational, character-driven mode of 2004’s Malaga Festival winner “Hector,” and “15 Years and One Day,” a 2013 best picture Goya contender, and Spain’s 2014 Academy Awards submission.

She does so in “The Invisible,” written with regular co-scribe Antonio Mercero, with a directness contrasting with her early often more oblique work.

In what Querejeta herself recognizes as her most personal work to date,...

The most interesting aspect of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice (in the Spotlight programme of the New York Film Festival), starring Tilda Swinton, is her DVD collection. Or is it his? Douglas Sirk’s Written On The Wind and All That Heaven Allows, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (Volume 1 or 2), Blake Edwards’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread - do they signal that what is to come is also a story of melodrama and revenge, loneliness and grief and powerful infatuation? Yes. On the bookshelves we see F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night and Almodóvar inspirations past (Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness; three of her short stories became his Julieta) and future (he is working on an adaptation of A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin for 2022).

Swinton, always a...

Filming is underway on new police thriller “Parot” – a series based on the chaos that followed a controversial move seven years ago to reverse a piece of legislation in Spain that ensured prisoners served their full jail terms.

The ten-part drama, made up of one-hour episodes, focuses on a series of retribution attacks on prisoners who were subsequently released early, and a police officer determined to track down the person or people responsible for a series of revenge killings.

Filmed on location in Madrid – the series was ordered by ViacomCBS International Studios and Spanish public broadcaster channel and is being made by local production-sales company Onza, producers of Spanish time travel drama “The Department of Time.”

Since its launch in 2018, Vis has been on a major production drive and SVP & head of Vis Americas Federico Cuervo added that “Parot” marked the continuation of its strategy to pursue content partnerships with key European partners.

Spanish filmmaker claimed releasing his films on streaming platforms would sever contact with his audiences.

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has heralded cinema as the “antidote” to quarantine and said releasing his films on streaming platforms would sever contact with his audiences.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker spoke at a press conference in Venice, where he is screening his first English-language short, The Human Voice. The 30-minute film stars Tilda Swinton, who joined the director and his brother and producer Agustin Almodovar at the event.

Speaking about how audiences turned to streaming platforms during the pandemic, Almodovar said: “The lockdown has forced us all to stay at home.

Pedro Almodovar and Tilda Swinton heated things up at the Venice Film Festival this afternoon, speaking to the press after the screening of the Spanish maestro’s first English-langauge project, The Human Voice. “Freely” based on the 1930 Jean Cocteau play, the 30-minute movie was shot after the coronavirus lockdown was lifted. Almodovar will quickly return to work in October, because, “Despite uncertainty, we have to go on, we have to make films.”

The director joined others who over the course of two days on the Lido have made impassioned pleas for the big screen experience. That includes Swinton during her Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement speech last night. Today, she separately weighed in on another popular topic during a masterclass, praising Berlin’s decision to switch to gender-neutral awards. She predicted, it’s “inevitable that everybody will follow.”

During the Human Voice press conference, Swinton explained she had been “entirely besotted...

Pedro Almodóvar has a lot on his plate, with at least three new projects in the mix, but he’s not too busy to do his part during the pandemic and wear a mask, as seen in a recent photo out of Madrid shared by his brother and producing partner Agustín. In the photo, Almodóvar and his star Tilda Swinton are sporting their personal protective equipment while on the first day of shooting “The Human Voice,” the Academy Award-winning director’s latest short film and first screen collaboration with Tilda Swinton. See below.

“The Human Voice” is based on a one-act play by Jean Cocteau, written in 1928 and first mounted in France in 1930. It concerns one woman’s final phone conversation with her longtime lover, who has plans to marry another woman. Almodóvar previously alluded to interest in the material before, including as inspiration for his Oscar-nominated 1988 breakout “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown...

Paris — “Narcos” showrunner Chris Brancato and “Godfather of Harlem” star Giancarlo Esposito, actors Carole Bouquet and Zabou Breitman, and the cast and crew behind the Canal Plus series “The Bureau” will be among the many guest of honor at this year’s Series Mania, which will kick off its 11th edition on March 20.

Returning to the north-eastern French city of Lille, Series Mania will once again offer a broad cross-section of international scripted dramas, with a selection culled from 25 different countries including Chile, Peru, Niger, Senegal and South Korea, alongside high profile productions from the U.S., the U.K. and France.

Among the 38 productions world premiering in Lille, the BBC/Tvnz literary adaption “The Luminaries,” with Eva Green, will play as opening series while the closer remains unannounced.

Once again, Netflix makes a strong showing this year. Beyond bringing the cast and crew of their Paris-set drama “The Eddy,...

Amazon has firmed up cast for A League Of Their Own comedy pilot, adding Chanté Adams (Bad Hair) and Roberta Colindrez (Vida) as series regulars, joining previously announced Kelly McCormack (Killjoys) and Priscilla Delgado (Julieta). Also confirmed are Gbemisola Ikumelo (Famalam) and The Good Place alum D’Arcy Carden, who were previously reported to be nearing deals, along with writer-executive producer Abbi Jacobson. Florida Girls‘ Melanie Field is set to recur.

The hourlong pilot, a fresh approach to Penny Marshall’s 1992 feature film, hails from writers/executive producers Jacobson and Will Graham and Sony Pictures TV. The show will follow brand new characters who embody the spirit of a generation of incredible women who dared to play professional baseball. The show begins with the formation of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1943 and follows our heroes as they fight to keep the League alive through close games, injuries, sexual...

Pedro Almodóvar has spent months on the campaign trail for “Pain and Glory,” but the 70-year-old Spanish auteur is wasting no time going back to work. In an interview over the weekend, Almodóvar revealed exclusively to IndieWire his plans to direct two new projects in the months ahead — a short film starring Tilda Swinton adapted from Jean Cocteau’s one-act play “The Human Voice,” followed by a feature-length adaptation of the late American writer Lucia Berlin’s short story collection, “A Manual for Cleaning Women.”

The two projects will mark Almodóvar’s long-awaited foray into English-language filmmaking after several other attempts over the years, from an offer to direct “Sister Act” in the early nineties to his Alice Munro adaptation “Julieta,” which was originally set to start Meryl Streep before Almodóvar decided to do the project in Spanish. Sources in Almodóvar’s inner circle expressed uncertainty about the overall timeline for the two projects,...