Uruguay’s Mother Superior Snags Rights to the Life And Times of Famed Spanish Gang Member, Boxer José Luis Pacheco

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Running March 13-17, the Málaga Festival’s Mafiz-Spanish Screenings Content weigh in this year as one of the biggest dedicated Spanish movie platforms in history, boasting also a strong line in Latin American arthouse projects and productions. 10 Takes as the event kicks off, blessed by early Spring sunshine, in the Andalusian city: XXXL In 2022, super-sized by the Spanish Screenings Content, part of Spain’s €1.6 billion ($1.7 billion) AVS Spain Hub, a vibrant Mafiz, the Malaga Film Festival industry area, fair exploded, delivering  a sterling confirmation of Spain’s build as a fiction force in a platform age, aided by robust state sector backing. This year, Mafiz looks even larger. At 1,560 delegates and counting as of March 6, Mafiz is tracking to pass 2022’s final attendance figure of around 1,600, Juan Antonio Vigar, Málaga Festival director told Variety. Participants come from 62 countries, up from 53 last year. “The event’s consolidation is clear,” Vigar added. “It makes us feel that the work we do is useful for the sector,” he adds. 

Ed Meza @edmezavar Filmax has acquired international rights to “Ashes in the Sky,” the first narrative feature from director Miquel Romans. The film is inspired by the life of Neus Català, a feminist and republican who, after fighting in the Spanish Civil War, was captured by the Nazis and sent into forced labor at a weapons factory in Czechoslovakia. There she became the head of an anti-fascist group of women known as the Gandulas Commando, which resisted the Nazis by sabotaging the factory. The film, based on the book of the same name by Carme Martí, stars Nausicaa Bonnín (“Dating in Barcelona”), Rachel Lascar (“Elite”), Iria del Río (“Visitor”), Thomas Sauerteig, Daniel Horvath (“The Burning Cold”), Fernando Corral, Laura Conejero, Roger Batalla, Natascha Wiese and Joaquín Caserza.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian sales company True Colours has closed a raft of sales following Berlin’s European Film Market. Italy’s box office hit “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”) got picked up for a dozen territories and queer romantic drama “Norwegian Dream” also sold widely, including to North America. Directed by Roberto Andò, “Strangeness” (pictured) toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been a sleeper hit at the Italian box office, coming from nowhere to pull more than €5.5 million ($5.8 million) and becoming the local 2022 box office champ.

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.

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

Michaela Zee editor Woody Harrelson steps onto the court once again (“White Men Can’t Jump,” “Semi-Pro”) in the heartfelt sports comedy “Champions.” Directed by Bobby Farrelly, the remake of the 2018 Spanish film “Campeones” sees Harrelson as Marcus, a former minor-league basketball coach who leads a team of intellectually disabled players called the Friends. “It’s really hard to make an authentically funny and emotionally vulnerable film, and I thought they did such a wonderful job,” Kaitlin Olson, who plays Alex in the movie, told Variety Monday night at the New York premiere of “Champions.” “I met all the Friends and they’re such an incredible cast. They all showed up ready to play, and we just had the most amazing time.”

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures International Productions has optioned remake rights to Latvian Christmas comedy Accidental Santa in eight territories: North America, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico and Brazil.

Former Love Island star Luca Bish has poked fun at his mum, Maria, after she made her 'TV debut'. Maria, who is an antiques dealer, took to Instagram to post her excitement that she would be "making my tv debut" on an episode of Salvage Hunters, which aired on the Quest channel on 22 February.

Karol G gears up for the release of her new studio album, her team is pulling out all the stops, including moving billboards in Times Square, New York. This past Tuesday, fans were treated with a glimpse of Shakira and Karol G in the iconic location’s gigantic screens.Shakira and Karol G are officially releasing their first song together! This is what we knowShakira releases new merch inspired by Gerard Piqué break up song“Tu reality show favorito llega a su fin” — TQG, Karol G & Shakira. 24 Febrero.

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.

Liza Foreman In 1995, Alex de la Iglesia directed his second feature, “The Day of the Beast,” which marked a milestone in Spanish cinema, yoking full-on U.S. genre tropes – a bloody against-the-clock search for an Antichrist – with a bathetic but very grounded Spanish reality, featuring a downbeat boarding house, a local metalhead and the tawdry star of an occult-themed trash TV show.  The film opened the floodgates for other directors, weened on VHS binging, to mix U.S. and Spanish realities. Now nearly 30 years later, De la Iglesia is at it again. A showreel of movies and series made by Pokeepsie Films, the shingle he founded with Carolina Bang in 2009, dazzled at a Next from Spain showcase panel on Monday at Berlinale Series Market. Standouts included the sheer visual boldness of excerpts, their pop out tones, – such as in Eduardo Casanova’s lush pink in “La Pietá” – or mixture of gore, high-production values and comedy, as in HBO Max series “30 Coins.”

Eater DC in a 2022 overview of the area’s culinary and cultural renaissance.The deals during this year’s “Savor Bethesda,” an annual Restaurant Week organized and presented by Bethesda Urban Partnership, should inspire a day trip or night-out jaunt to Bethesda all on their own. At least 34 restaurants are participating in the promotion, all offering specials at one or more price points, starting at the remarkably low $10.For that price, you could score a Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Tomato Soup plus soda, tea, or lemonade for lunch at the sports bar Caddies on Cordell (4922 Cordell Ave.), a Bratwurst with peppers and onions and a side of Broccoli Cheddar Soup for lunch or dinner at Rock Bottom Brewery (7900 Norfolk Ave.), or three RW Special Tacos for lunch or dinner from Chaia Tacos (7237 Woodmont Ave.).

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.

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. 

Spain boasts a bullish presence at the Berlinale. Following, short profiles of its features that have made the festival cut and a selection of top titles being moved at the European Film Market: Director: Estíbaliz Urresola Spain’s Berlin competition player is from Urresola, director of Cannes Critics’ Week short “Chords.” Film takes place in a Basque Country village and is a celebration of female sexual diversity. Catalonia’s Inicia Films (“La Maternal”) produces with Gariza Films (“Nora”). Sales: Luxbox