Spanish TV Talents to Track

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.

yeule’s music comes from a distinctly posthumanist perspective. So it’s only fitting that the remixes they’re so often tapped to make end up sounding more like full-on recreations, stripped for parts and rebuilt in the Singapore-born, London-based artist’s own cyborgian image. Premiering on The FADER today (March 1) is yeule’s take on “EASY PREY” — a track from Moderat’s 2022 album MORE D4TA — reimagined in collaboration with Kin Leonn (a fellow Singapore-born, London-based electronic experimentalist).

Spanish Screenings Content unspool March 13-16 in the Andalusian coastal city. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Celebrated actor Nigel Havers and French journalist Sophie Davant will join Warner Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP) and ZDF Studios to celebrate 10 years and a now 10 territory roll-out of antique auction show “Cash or Trash.”  The property is produced by WBITVP and distributed internationally by ZDF Studios. Celebrations will take place as part of WBITVP’s Formats Showcase, held March 2 at BAFTA during this year’s London TV Screenings.  Havers (“Chariots of Fire,” “Finding Alice”) and Davant host the adaptations of “Cash or Trash,” on BBC One (“The Bidding Room”) and French public TV channel France 2 (“Affair Conclue”).

Shakira seemingly sings about her split from ex-husband Gerard Piqué in another new song.

Shakira is back with another breakup song!

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor To director Mira Fornay, there are no three things more important in life than trees, water and children. And with “She-Hero,” playing as part of the Generation strand at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival, the Slovakian filmmaker gathers all three in telling the story of Romy (Rozmarína Willems), a young girl who embarks on a grand forest adventure in search of her lost budgie, Mimi. Fornay, who won the Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam Tiger Award in 2013 with her sophomore feature “My Dog Killer,” did not originally set out to make a children’s film, but was fascinated by the natural charisma of Willems. “I already knew Romy and she is immensely photogenic, but I didn’t know if she could act as well. So I tried working with her back when she was six, and she was just amazing. When COVID hit, I realized I had to shoot quickly otherwise she would grow. This is why I wrote a story for her.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Veteran auteur Mario Martone, whose Naples-set drama “Nostalgia” launched last year from Cannes, has quite a lot in common with Massimo Troisi, Italy’s beloved late comic actor-director who is best known internationally as the star of Oscar-winning film “Il Postino.” Which is why Martone was well-suited to direct the multi-layered doc about Troisi’s legacy “Somebody Down There Likes Me” that is screening in the Berlinale Special sidebar. For starters, they are both Neapolitan, and were born only a few years a part. Troisi – who in “Il Postino” played the simple postman who rides his bicycle on a sandy Italian island to deliver mail to his sole client, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda – died tragically of congenital heart failure at age 41 in June 1994, the day after “Il Postino” finished shooting at Rome’s Cinecittà studios.

Guy Lodge Film Critic In time, stories like “20,000 Species of Bees” will come to feel as commonplace within the coming-of-age genre as tales of first love or heartbreak: a young girl, unhappy in her skin and at odds with her family, finally recognizes her gender over the course of one pivotal summer, and persuades others to recognize it too. For now, Spanish writer-director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s mellow, softly piercing debut feature joins the likes of Céline Sciamma’s “Tomboy” and Emanuele Crialese’s “L’Immensità” in a select but growing canon of trans or nonbinary childhood studies. Unassuming and meanderingly character-oriented, the film doesn’t assert itself as an issue drama — in large part because, as Solaguren presents her eight-year-old protagonist’s gradual steps toward self-realization, her film doesn’t see much of an issue to begin with.

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.”

A high school teacher has reportedly been stabbed to death by a pupil during a Spanish lesson.

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.

Berlin Film Festival. At least not according to the co-chiefs of Turkey’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. “The festival’s opening ceremony started with Ukraine, ended with Ukraine and touched on Iran. But I don’t think they ever mentioned Turkey,” said Ahmet Boyacıoğlu, president of the fest that has historically always been the country’s prime local cinema catalyst.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The life of Turkey’s most famous photographer, Ara Guler, known globally for his portraits of scores of 20th century icons ranging from Pablo Picasso to Winston Churchill, is set to become a biopic directed by writer-director duo Aren Perdeci and Ela Almayanac (“Lost Birds”). Guler worked for many years for the photo agency Magnum, after its co-founder, celebrated photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, personally signed him up. Besides documenting top 20th century personalities, Guler, who died in 2018, gained fame for his images of a bygone Istanbul, which earned him the moniker “Istanbul’s Eye.” He established a long collaboration with Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. Guler’s photographs were included in the 2003 Pamuk book “Istanbul: Memories and the City.” He also directed the 1975 doc “End of the Hero,” about a World War I battle cruiser.

Brazil’s next generation of cinematic talent tackles a huge gamut of themes, styles and concern about social issues. Variety profiles 10 figures who look set to help shape the future of Brazilian filmmaking. Alves de Souza has such films as 2020 Berlin Generation winner “My Name Is Baghdad,” a plucky tale of adolescence on the fringes of society, and 2013’s San Sebastian Horizontes Latinos debut “Underage,” a riveting look at juvenile justice under her belt. She shreds ignorance with her belief “in the power of a cinema that questions established norms but also offers some alternative.”

Who knew a Canadian biopic of an infamous smartphone could be this entertaining, even poignant and moving? I am here to tell you today’s World Premiere Berlin Film Festival competition entry, BlackBerry is all that and more.