Spanish Films to Track at Berlin

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Sideshow and Janus Films have bought North American rights for “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Paul B. Preciado’s film which won four awards at the Berlinale. In “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Preciado sheds light on Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” the first novel in which the main character changes sex in the middle of the story.  A century later, Preciado, who is a trans writer and activist, decides to send a film letter to Woolf, telling her that Orlando has come out of her fiction and is living a life she could have never imagined. Preciado organizes a casting and gathers 26 contemporary trans and non-binary people, from 8 to 70 years old, who embody Orlando.

Talking Prince Harry & Meghan Markle with our Cuban mother.

Karol G is making her mark! The Colombian singer is enjoying the success of her new project ‘Mañana Será Bonito,’ becoming the first woman in history to score No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with an all-Spanish-language album.The 32-year-old musician has achieved a historic record, debuting at the top of the charts. Previously, only two all-Spanish albums led the list, both by Bad Bunny (‘Un Verano Sin Ti’ in 2022 and El Último Tour del Mundo in 2020).Karol G continues to reach for the stars, as her latest collaboration with Shakira has been a total success.

Sparks have shared the title track for their new album ‘The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte’.The Los Angeles duo – comprising brothers Ron and Russell Mael – also announced that the song, which you can listen to below, will come with a video featuring actress Cate Blanchett at 5pm GMT tomorrow (March 3) here.They said via press release: “We met Cate Blanchett in Paris at the César Awards last year, little knowing that a year later, one of the great actors of our time (and a splendid person!) would graciously consent to lending her bootie-shaking skills to the first video from our new album, ‘The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte’. Dreams really do come true.

EXCLUSIVE: The Match Factory has unveiled a slew of deals for German director Christian Petzold’s Berlin Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winner Afire.

The competition winners of the 73rd Berlinale are about to start rolling in as the festival draws to a close Saturday evening.

EXCLUSIVE: Following bidding wars in multiple territories, A24 has sold Past Lives, probably the year’s most critically acclaimed new film, to a raft of key territories.

A little less than five years after a tax-evasion scandal saw Chinese star Fan Bingbing disappear from public view for several months, the actress today addressed the Berlin Film Festival press corps in support of her latest movie, Green Night. 

Anna Marie de la Fuente Chile’s Quijote Films, run by Giancarlo Nasi, has reteamed with former partners El Viaje Films of Spain and Argentina’s Gema Films on two separate projects. Attending the Berlin Film Festival’s European Film Market, Nasi said: “This market has been very good for us because as one of the outfits selected in the company matching program of the Co-Production Market, we have met with a lot of new firms from different countries. At the same time, we’ve been able to advance and confirm our collaboration with past partners.” Quijote Films and El Viaje Films, partners on Theo Court’s “White on White,” which garnered the Venice Horizons Best Director and Fipresci awards and was Chile’s entry to the best international feature film Oscar race last year, are reteaming on Court’s latest film, “Tres noches negras” (“Three Dark Nights”).

Liza Foreman He’s become one of Spain’s most successful auteur directors of big audience hits. Now director-writer-producer Alex de la Iglesia (“The Day of the Beast,” “30 Coins”) and producing partner, the actor-producer Carolina Bang (“The Last Circus”), have turned to wayward soccer players for their latest TV outing, HBO Max show “Headless Chickens.” The starting point for this upcoming Spanish series is curiosity, Bang explained at an afternoon Q&A session at the Berlinale Series Market on Tuesday scheduled in the Next from Spain strand. “Alex and I don’t like soccer very much but we have a lot of curiosity about the industry,” said Bang. “You have a lot of young people that became very rich very quickly. It destroys your head.”

Holly Jones In a knock-out deal, Ignacio Cucucovich and Gustavo Hernández of Montevideo-based Mother Superior Films have acquired rights to Spanish boxer and entertainer José Luis ‘Dum Dum’ Pacheco’s life story, starting with his autobiography, “Mear Sangre.” “Dum Dum is a living reflection of a generation that’s managed to overcome many blows at a difficult time in history. He was born into a humble home, imprisoned at a very young age,” Cucucovich told Variety. “In addition, the era the story would encompass is fascinating to us, full of freedoms gaining ground, young people exploring and developing, in success and error, a lot of creative abundance, in a constant clash with what society then considered correct. It was a time of discovery and creation.”

Ed Meza @edmezavar Spanish producers taking part in a Spanish content showcase at the Berlinale Series Market on Monday debated what was jokingly referred to as the “devil’s bargain” offered by major streaming platforms that are propelling Spanish shows around the globe often at the cost of IP ownership.    Álex de la Iglesia of Madrid-based production powerhouse Pokeepsie Films said the company for years retained the IP of films that played in local cinemas. “We assumed there was no other model. Now, maybe we lose our IP, but suddenly our movies are in the houses of the whole planet. Maybe you have to sell your soul to these ‘diabolical’ platforms,” he joked. “But I can only say that working with the devil is worth it.,” he added.

Liza Foreman ZDF Studios has signed a deal to distribute the second season of the remake of the iconic Spanish horror series “Stories to Stay Awake” (“Historias Para No Dormir”). The series is a reboot of the classic series created by Spain’s Chicho Ibáñez Serrador in the 1960s which proved a milestone in Spanish horror, introducing Spain to classic tales from Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe,   The deal sees ZDF Studios taking distribution rights to “Stories” in all territories outside Spain, Portugal, Italy and Latin America, which will be handled by Paramount Global Content Distribution. ZDF operated in the same capacity for the first season.

Holly Jones The stars are aligning on political thriller “The Chauffeur’s Son,” a six-part series from acclaimed Spanish creative duo Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campo.  It is one of five projects that has pulled down a muscular €1.5 million ($1.6 million) grant from Catalonia’s ICEC film-TV aimed at ensuring potential production partners that the series can bring series money to the table. It comes after the two which won two Golden Shells at San Sebastian, for “The Double Steps” (2011) and “Between Two Waters” (2018), have demonstrated their chops for directing broad audience drama series, directing and in Campo’s case writing two episodes in Movistar+’s series “Offworld,” a Variety 2022 Best International TV Series.    

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema has unveiled its 85-title lineup for the edition that starts later this month (February 28 to March 7, 2023). Elements include a 10-film competition section, a 10-film documentary film section, a tribute to the Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu; a thematic section “Asian Diaspora Cinema” offering a panorama of works by directors from Asian countries living in exile; and a Philippines cinema sidebar. Fiction films in competition include: Azerbaijan’s “Cold as Marble,” by Asif Rustamov; China’s “In Our Prime,” by Liu Yulin; Korea’s “A Letter from Kyoto,” by Kim Min-ju; India’s: “Behind Veils,” by Praveen Morshhale; Iran’s “No End,” by Nader Saievar; Mongolia’s “The Sales Girl,” by Sengedorj Janchivdorj; The Philippines’s “Feast,” by Brillante Mendoza; Singapore’s “#LookAtMe,” by Ken Kwek; and Vietnam’s “Memento Mori: Earth,” by Marcus Vu Manh Cuong. The president of the jury is Lee Yong-kwan, president of the Busan film festival.

The battle for success on the new drama series scene is the battle for talent, led by screenwriters. Following, portraits of Spanish TV scribes or creators, sometimes writing teams, who’ve made an impact, or look set to do so: 2022 was Araujo’s year. He co-wrote Berlin Competition’s “One Night, One Day” and “Rapa,” Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow. “Offworld,” a collective series he coordinated, was a Variety’s International TV Show of the Year. An iconoclast – “if I do the same thing, I get bored,” he says –  who tears up the rule book. Best known for acting, winning at Malaga for “The Wild Ones,” but a driving force as co-creator, director and star behind “This Is Not Sweden” a €1.5 million grant recipient and groundbreaking Spain-Scandinavia-Germany co-pro, turning on a couple who think they’ve found a model lifestyle. But “there are no guarantees,” says Clotet. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent The latest series from Alex de la Iglesia and “Veneno” creators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo feature at a first-look Next from Spain Showcase which marks a massive step-up in the country’s presence at the Berlinale Series Market. Running Feb. 20-22, the showcase also unveils “Rapa” Season 2, with its first season proving Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow, and “This Is Not Sweden,” a pioneering Spanish co-production with Scandinavia and Germany.  The Showcase titles are joined by Isaki Lacuesta’s “The Chauffeur’s Son,” a Co-Pro Series project from “Elite’s” Zeta Studios, and “Selftape,” a Filmin Original from Filmax and a Series Market Screening.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sales agency Memento Intl. has unveiled the first clip and poster from Liu Jian’s Berlin competition title “Art College 1994,” which world premieres on Feb. 24. The film is a portrait of youth set on the campus of the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of reforms opening China to the Western world, a group of college students live in full swing as they take their first steps into adulthood, where love and friendships are intertwined with artistic pursuits, ideals and ambitions. Caught between tradition and modernity, they now have to choose who they want to become. It is the director’s third animation feature after 2010’s “Piercing I” and “Have a Nice Day,” which premiered in competition at the Berlinale in 2017, and quickly built a cult following. “Have a Nice Day” was also honored with the best animated feature award at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent He was working to the last. Five days before his latest work, “Lorca by Saura,” opened at Madrid’s Infanta Isabel Theater – in what he saw as a new phase of theatre-based creativity –  Carlos Saura died on Feb. 10 at his Collado Mediano home in the lap of the Guadarrama mountains, north of Madrid. Agnieszka Holland and Volker Schlöndorff look set to attend a Carlos Saura Homage Screening which will be held at the Berlin Film Festival on Monday Feb. 20 at 17:30.  Further good and great are still to confirmed at an event backed by the Berlin Festival and the European Film Academy. The tribute will be combined with the double bill of “Rosa, Rosae” and “Walls Can Talk” (“Las paredes hablan”), films which premiered at San Sebastian in 2021 and last year.

Celebrities were out and about this week on red carpets, TV talk show sets and on the streets of Los Angeles and New York. Alec Baldwin was seen strolling down the streets of Brooklyn after picking up his morning coffee on Wednesday.  The actor's outing came after it was reported that Dave Halls, the assistant director of his movie "Rust," may testify against him in the 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Baldwin and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed are facing charges of involuntary manslaughter.