Roberto Perez Toledo’s Swan Song, ‘Places Where We’ve Never Been,’ Bows Clip Before Malaga Screening (EXCLUSIVE)

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.

Taylor Hawkins died, the Foo Fighters drummer was lured out of his Paraguay hotel room to meet a 9-year-old street drummer who was banging away on his songs.Emma Sofía and her father Julius Peralta had tickets to see the band at the Asunciónico music festival on March 22, but the event was canceled amid heavy flooding, according to Nexstar.The fans then got word that the Foo Fighters were staying at the Sheraton hotel in Asuncion.“We took her drum kit and went,” Peralta reportedly said.Viral singalongs of the band’s song “The Pretender” and Nirvana’s “In Bloom” ensued, as Sofía pounded the skins while throngs of fans accompanied her on vocals.The impromptu jam session eventually drew Hawkins out of the hotel to look for the talented and persistent young percussionist.A post shared by Emma Sofía (@emmasofiamusic)As the smiling late drummer posed for a now-viral picture with his awestruck apprentice, dozens of fans were in the background cheering for the beaming duo.“Dreams come true,” Peralta captioned the photo in English on Twitter.“Since my daughter found out that the Foo Fighters were coming, she started a campaign to meet them,” he wrote in Spanish. “Today we took her drums to play in front of the Sheraton and look who came out at her call.”Three days later, Hawkins was be found dead in a Columbia hotel room, reportedly filled with a cache of drugs, at the age of 50.Emma’s parents did not immediately inform the 9-year-old of his untimely death, explaining online they hoped to spare her “a lot of pain” before her Friday night debut performance.They “didn’t have the courage to break the magic of that unforgettable moment,” her father wrote.

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.

It’s going to be another warm and sunny weekend in Greater Manchester. And what better way to spend it than going for a walk with family and friends, enjoying a few drinks in a beer garden or kicking back in your own back yard?

Anna Marie de la Fuente The Málaga Festival Industry Zone (MAFIZ) wrapped Thursday, March 25 with a slew of awards parceled out to productions from across Spain and Latin America. Several projects by women filmmakers dominated the event, which kicked off on March 21.Spanish documentarian Carla Subirana’s fiction feature debut, “Sica” made off with three private-sector plaudits, including the Aracne post-production cash prize of €20,000 ($22,000) as well as the REC and Abycine awards, comprising participation in their respective industry labs.Backed by Alba Sotorra’s Cinema Productions, Galician firm Miramira, Spanish pubcaster TVE and Catalonia’s TVC, the coming-of-age drama turns on 13-year-old Sica who waits by the Costa da Morte, a Galician fishing shoreline, for the sea to give up the body of her fisherman father who perished at sea. Other Work in Progress (WIP) awards went to documentary “Of Books and Women,” by María Elorza of Spain and “Nothing” (a working title) by Brazil’s Adriana Guimaraes.“Of Books and Women” offers a glimpse of various women and their relationships to books, one keeps a Franciscan library in a junk room, the other nearly breaks her finger on her bookshop shelves.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II are in Spain promoting their new movie!

 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.

Ed Meza @edmezavarFilmax has acquired the international rights to Spanish helmer Hector Claramunt’s escape room comedy, “You Lie You Die.”The pic is based on Claramunt and Joel Joan’s hit stage play “Escape Room,” which has been seen by more than 200,000 people over the course of four seasons. Joen and Claramunt also penned the film’s script.Described as a “madcap” laffer, “You Lie You Die” follows two couples whose plans to have a fun night out at an escape room go south.

Emilio Mayorga Buzzy titles such as “Guián,” “Rhinoceros” and “Of Books and Women I Sing” are among the 14 titles at Málaga’s extensive WIP showcase, a springboard in the past for the discovery of titles such as Spanish horror thriller “The Platform” which, winning the Latido Films Prize at WIP, has gone on to become the second most-watched non-English language movie ever on Netflix.Awarded the biggest plaudit at last year’s Malaga WIP, Adrián Silvestre’s “My Emptiness and I” made a splash at February’s Rotterdam Festival and now competes at Málaga.In a 2022 spread of titles presented over March 22-25, six hail from Spain and eight from Latin-America In addition to the Málaga Film Festival award, private-sector prizes from Aracne Digital Cinema, Damita Joe, Latamcinema.com, Latido Films, Music Library, Yagán Films– are also at stake. The Spanish section’s jury comprises Madrid Film School’s Luis Ferrón, Quatre Films producer Alejandra Mora and Joana Gusmão, DocLisboa co-director.Jury members for the Latin America section are Pamela Biénzobas, a Locarno selection committee member, Cup Filmes producer Iván Carlos De Melo and Antoine Sebire, general delegate at the Biarritz Latin America Festival.2022 Málaga WIP Lineup:Spanish WIP“Of Books and Women I Sing,” (María Elorza, TxintxuaFilms)A creative documentary about four women who have spent their lives reading and studying, safeguarding a precious heritage.

It's a feeling many of us are all too familiar with. The frustration and anxiety that comes with waiting at a bus stop, wondering if you'll make it to work on time.

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.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentLaunched in 1998, the Malaga Film Festival first grabbed attention as a Spanish movie showcase and birthplace of a Spanish star system, TV actors walking a red carpet to acclaim from milling throngs. Under Juan Antonio Vigar, director from 2013, it has consolidated as a platform for a new generation of Spanish filmmakers while adding ever increasing industry heft – co-pro forums, WIPs, a HACK digital forum initiative – and also opening up to TV. In 2021, however, Malaga Festival and Spanish Screenings have exploded in scale, impact and attendance.  The narrative of this year’s event is largely one of that growth. Eight takes on this and other Malaga highlights:Malaga Lifts Off  Little wonder Malaga forms part of what’s now the Spanish Screenings XXL.

“Ainarak,” (“Swallows,” Maluta Films, 601 Prods.Audiovisuales)Directed by Juan San Martín and starring singer-songwriter Anne Etchegoyen, the documentary follows the annual diaspora from 1870 to 1940 of hundreds of women from Navarre and Aragon to Mauléon in the French Pyrenees, where they worked from fall to spring making canvas shoes. First presented at Conecta Fiction in 2021.

2022 Malaga Festival Lineup:Main Competition“Emperor Code,” (“Código Emperador,” Jorge Coira, Vaca Films, Playtime, Spain)The Malaga Fest opener, a noirish crime thriller with special services operative Luis Tosar moonlighting for the elite, here trying to dig up the dirt on a young politico. Segueing rapidly to Netflix after an A Contracorriente release in Spain.“A Mae,” (Cristiano Burlan, Brazil) The latest from the prolific Brazilian narrative and doc director, maker of euthanasia-themed “Antes do fim,” and 2015’s “Hunger.” In it, a humble street vendor mother searches desperately for her missing son, claiming the right to at least bury his body.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentSPOILER ALERT: Do not read ahead if you have not watched the Season 4 finale of “Elite.”Save Cannes, most film festivals have a TV strand. So the biggest event at a now super-sized Malaga Film Festival has also happened on just day two of proceedings; the presentation of the soon-to-drop Season 5 of “Elite,” the second most-viewed Spanish-language series-franchise on the streaming giant, after “Money Heist,” which is still saying something.Málaga focuses on Spanish and Latin American film and TV.