Top Malaga Industry Awards Go to ‘Of Books and Women,’ ‘Nothing,’ ‘SICA’

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe estate of the late Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel has signed an exclusive, worldwide agreement with Virgin Music US Latin and extended its agreement with Universal Music Publishing Group. Under the new deal, Virgin Music US Latin will now represent Juan Gabriel’s post-2008 catalog and future recordings, while UMPG will represent his entire catalog through an extended, exclusive global publishing agreement, bringing Gabriel’s music under the Universal Music roof.New music will be released “in the coming months,” the announcement continues, including the highly anticipated “Los Duo 3, including duets with Mon LaFerte and Gloria Trevi as well as posthumously recorded duets. Billboard notes that Gabriel, who died in 2016, left behind dozens of unreleased recordings, including new songs and re-recordings of older ones.

Emilio Mayorga Spanish director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, who swept the board at March’s Málaga Festival, has wrapped shooting on her sophomore feature, “Eres Tú” (It’s You), a Netflix’ romantic comedy produced by Antonio Asensio and Paloma Molina at Zeta Studios ­­– the Madrid-based company behind phenomenon “Elite.” Miriam Rodríguez executive produces.After distributing Almodovar, and signing up J.A. Bayona, this is another move into director driven fare by Netflix in Spain, Ruiz de Azúa’s attachment to “Eres tú marks another association with a prestige director by Netflix in Spain which already distributes Pedro Almodóvar and has signed up J.A.

When I returned to Manchester Airport’s Terminal 1 today with a bag to check in I was expecting the worst. With the airport boss quitting yesterday after daily pictures and stories of mayhem, I was not hopeful in having a smooth journey to Malaga in the south of Spain.

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.

Spotify has revealed that it paid $7billion (£5.3billion) to artists last year.The news was published via its Loud And Clear website, which aims to “increase transparency” around payments.The streaming giant said that 56,200 musicians received more than $10,000 (£7,500) from Spotify last year and 130 of these were paid more than $5m (£3.8m).However, the figures shared don’t include the final figure the artist receives once labels and publishers have taken their share, which means the money they receive is often much lower. Songwriters and session musicians receive even less.The service has come under fire previously for its low artist payments, with the likes of David Byrne, producer Tony Visconti and David Crosby all criticising the platform recently.Visconti described the streaming service as “disgusting” over its low payments to artists.

Emilio Mayorga Jose Zelada and Richard Claus’ “Ainbo: Spirit of the Amazon” (Peru, Netherlands), Cesar Cabral’s “Bob Spit: We Do Not Like People” (Brazil) and Hugo Covarrubias’ Oscar-nommed “Beast” (Chile) are some of the animated works in the running for the 5th Quirino Awards, the biggest prize event on Spain, Portugal and Latin America’s burgeoning animation scene.In addition to a ceremony, the Quirino Awards includes an industry co-production and business forum for animation titles from the region.The Quirino event will also host meetings including one of the Ibero-American CAACI state film-TV agencies, and another of Ibermedia, the region’s key international co-pro and distribution fund. Brazilian feature “Bob Spit” and Chilean short “Beast” nabbed the highest number of nominations, each securing four.

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.

 Current ceilings are €18 million ($19.8 million) for the Canary Islands, €10 million ($11 million) for the rest of Spain.The call for a muscular rise in incentives was made at Spain’s Málaga Film Festival, as industry figures including Fernando Victoria de Lecea, line producer on Wes Anderson’s 2021 Spanish shoot “Asteroid City,” sketched a possible roadmap to take full advantage of the country’s extraordinary $1.8 billion Spain AVS Hub state funding which has begun to flow into events such as Málaga’s Spanish Screenings and the bullush promotion of Spanish series at Series Mania. Other panelists took in Carlos Rosado, president of the Spain Film Commission, Roberto Sacristán, head of Alianza Industria Audiovisual (ALIA) and Rosa García, president of RedCau, a network grouping five of Spain’s biggest film-TV clusters.In contrast to so many Spanish industry panels at festivals down the decades, the panel’s mood was upbeat. Rosado recalled how the Spain Film Commission aided in the creation of Spain’s first international shoot tax rebate on local spend, instituted in 2015, As first-phase COVID-19 still raged, at the instance of Rosado and former U.S.

Emilio Mayorga Alba Sotorra has teamed with Miramemira’s Andrea Vázquez, Spanish pubcaster TVE and Catalonia’s TVC to co-produce “Sica,” the first fiction feature of documentarist Carla Subirana , a 2012 Málaga Golden Biznaga winner for “Kanimambo” and director of “Nedar.”The film is included in Malaga’s Spanish WIP showcase.The feature focuses on 13-year old Sica who lives on Costa da Morte, a Galician fishing shoreline known for its natural beauty and the danger of its coast. Passionate about the ocean, Sica waits for the waves to bring back the corpse of her father, a fisherman who perished at sea alongside her friend’s Leda.

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.

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.

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.