Málaga Festival Spanish Screenings: 8 Takes, From Rampant Growth to a $1.8 billion Hub Plan and Buzz Titles

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentREinvent International Sales has inked a raft of deals across its slate of high-concept series, including “Transport” (pictured) and “Enemy of the People,” rolling off of MipTV. The company has sold both “Transport,” which is penned by Auli Mantila (“Silver Stars”), and the Icelandic comedy series “Ordinary People” to AMC Networks Southern Europe for Spain and Portugal. “Transport” is an eight-part TV show following a young journalist investigating a chip found in baby food.

Starzplay Acquires HBO’s Max’s Ken Watanabe Crime Thriller Series ‘Tokyo Vice’

HBO Max executive vice president and general manager Andy Forssell is leaving WarnerMedia ahead of the close of the company’s merger with Discovery, which is now set to close as early as Friday, Variety has learned.News that Forssell is out the door comes just as sources confirmed WarnerMedia studios and networks group chairman and CEO Ann Sarnoff was informed on Tuesday by leadership that her position would be eliminated, and follows WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar’s resignation this morning.As Variety reported earlier Tuesday, though insiders previously said the transaction between Discovery and WarnerMedia’s current owner AT&T would be formally completed on April 11, leading to the creation of new company Warner Bros. Discovery, two sources with knowledge of the situation say the merger is now expected to potentially be finalized by the close of business Friday.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBlue Note New York has announced the 11th Annual Sony Presents Blue Note Jazz Festival. The festival kicks off on June 1 with a free show in Washington Square Park headlined by Robert Glasper — who performed on the Oscars Sunday night — in association with Washington Square Park Conservancy.Taking place at major venues across New York City, including Blue Note New York, Sony Hall, The Town Hall, and SummerStage in Central Park, this year’s festival features performances from George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic, Chris Botti, Charles Lloyd, Macy Gray, Kenny G, Al Di Meola, Madeleine Peyroux, Dave Holland & Kenny Barron, Robert Cray, Kenny Garrett, José James, Chief Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott), Bilal, DOMi & JD Beck, Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, Theo Croker and so many more legends, with a major headliner announcement on April 26.

Sisters in beauty! A-list stars rely on their glam pros to look their most fabulous before a big event, but what happens when the celeb and the makeup artist are best friends? Magic, that’s what!

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentWrapping March 26, the 25th Malaga Festival and its Spanish Screenings delivered another confirmation of Spain’s build as a fiction force in a new platform era. Following, nine final takes on what may prove a historic edition. A Vibrant Spanish ScreeningsMálaga’s plus-size 2022 Spanish Screenings fairly rocked. Extra funding from Spain’s AVS Hub Plan, covering far more buyers’ flights, meant attendance skyrocketed.

Lullaby” and “Utama,” shot on an awe-inspiring Bolivian Altiplano, swept the board at a historic, 25th Málaga Film Festival which said a lot about the current state of the Spanish film industry. Running March 18-26, the Festival proved a vibrant affair, galvanised by renewed interest in the Spanish cinema after a buoyant reception for its major movies at Berlin, as well as the joy of proving the first time many industry attendees had seen each other in person in two years and backing from Spain’s AVS Hub plan for a vastly larger industry presence. In Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s “Lullaby,” coming after Sundance hit “Piggy” and Carla Simón’s Berlin Golden Bear triumph “Alcarrás,” Spain would look to have a third art pic breakout in just the first three months of 2022, all driven by a young generation of women cineastes, directors and producers. Carlota Pereda’s “Piggy” uses quite brilliantly a plus-size girl’s complicity with a serial killer to force home to audiences the terrifying hatred inspiredly bullying.

 Briefly, five first takeaways from this year’s edition: Spain’s On Fire“Spain’s audiovisual sectors are on fire,” said Luis Cueto, at Spain’s Department of Commerce, at a Malaga round table on Thursday. Just one generation ago, Spanish cinema was regarded with suspicion in Spain’s august financial circles. No more.

Emiliano De Pablos After more than a two decades relationship, media conglom Atresmedia Group and the Málaga Film Festival have grown what looks like a unique case of symbiosis in the Spanish film-TV industry.Atresmedia, a driving force in Spain’s film and TV sectors, joined the Málaga Festival as an official sponsor in 2000. The DeAPlaneta-controlled broadcaster and Málaga, today Spain’s biggest festival dedicated to local and Latin American film and TV, have been faithful witnesses of the evolution of the Spanish film and TV industry.The relationship has benefited both partners.   The Málaga Festival launched in 1998; one year later, a law began to oblige Spanish broadcasters to invest 5% of their annual revenues in local and European films.

A Place in the Sun’s Laura Hamilton was caught on video pole dancing in a Spanish bar on Tuesday while away on location for the Channel 4 show. The 39 year old was filmed enjoying a wild night out after flying to Valencia on work duty in a clip posted to Instagram Story to be watched by the presenter’s 153,000 followers.

Ed Meza @edmezavarBarcelona-based Filmax has picked up international rights to “We Won’t Kill Each Other With Guns,” by Spanish director Maria Ripoll (“Live Twice, Love Once”).Described as a generational tale, the film tells the story of a group of friends in their thirties who get together after years of not seeing each other. Ingrid Garcia-Jonsson (“Beautiful Youth”) leads a cast that also includes Elena Martin (“Julia Ist”), Lorena Lopez, Joe Manjon (“The August Virgin”) and Carlos Troya.While the village is getting ready for its annual fest, Blanca (Garcia-Jonsson) is organizing a get-together with all her old friends, whom she hasn’t seen in years.

HBO Max EMEA Boss Anthony Root has set out his team’s stall to “broaden the appeal” of the streamer “beyond the die hard Euphoria fan.”

Justin Morgan “Beyond the Summit” (“La Cima”), the latest film from director Ibón Cormenzana, producer of Goya-winning “Blancanieves,” has world premiered at Spain’s Malaga Film Festival, where it must rate as one of the event’s most singular and striking films. It was also one of four new Spanish films to feature in a Market Premiere showcase on Monday, the first day of the Spanish Screenings. The French-Spanish co-production, starring Javier Rey (“Sin fin”) and Patricia López Arnaiz (“The Plague”), tells the story of Mateo (Rey), an amateur mountaineer determined to scale Annapurna, a Nepalese peak rated as one of the world’s deadliest.On his first day, Mateo takes a fall, ending up in the care of revered Spanish mountaineer Ione (Arnaiz), who cares for him despite his recklessness. The story follows a tug-of-war relationship between the two of them, as Mateo seeks to summit despite ghastly conditions, and Ione attempts to bring him to sanity.But Mateo is determined to push for the summit, whatever the cost.

Ed Meza @edmezavarIn his latest work, which was being singled out for praise on the first day of Malaga’s Spanish Screenings, Imanol Uribe recounts the fateful story of Lucia Cerna, the only witness to the 1989 massacre in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests and two other people by a U.S.-trained death squad at a university residence in San Salvador.“What Lucia Saw” (“Llegaron de Noche”) focuses on the story of Lucia and her husband Jorge, who, with the help of church officials and Spanish and French diplomats, are spirited out of the country to Miami, where they hope to find safe haven. Once in the U.S., however, they fall into the clutches of the FBI and a Salvadoran colonel, who interrogate the couple in an effort to discredit Lucia’s testimony.

JD Linville Chilean filmmaker Matías Bize’s pandemic-prompted film “Private Messages” will be part of the Official Selection at the 2022 Malaga Film Festival, and the feature dives face-first into the stories which make us human, vulnerable and strong. Bize, who won a Spanish Academy Goya for his Variety-championed film “The Life of the Fish” in 2011, uses self-filmed footage of the film’s international cast (including Blanca Lewin, Nicolás Poblete, Antonia Zegers, Néstor Cantillana, Vicenta Ndongo, Alex Brendemühl and Verónica Intile) confessing their most intimate stories during 2020’s global lockdowns, which coincided with filming.“Private Messages” pieces its narrative together carefully, the truth of its storytellers overlaid with original music, and culminating in a powerful ending which memorializes the power of rebirth. Variety spoke to Bize ahead of his film’s premiere at Malaga.Covid was the impetus for “Private Messages,” but what else inspired the film? This film was born on the first day of the pandemic’s confinement.