A selection of the works in progress being showcased to to the international industry at the various Mafiz events.
As Neves (work in progress)
Dir. Sonia Méndez
Galician director Sonia Méndez is presenting this psychological thriller about a group of teenagers celebrating carnival. During the festival a video spreads containing sexual images of one of the women,. Overwhelmed by the situation, she leaves the party and disappears in the middle of a snowfall. “Adolescence has always attracted me in an aesthetic sense,” Mendez says. “I find it a fertile territory for visual narration and even more attractive in this multi-screen age.” The project will be Mendez directorial debut and is being produced by leading outfit Aquí y Allí, which backed Antonio Méndez’s Cannes Critics’ Week winner Aquí y Allá, as a co-production with Cósmica Producións. US-Spanish outfit 34T on board to handle international sales.
Contact: oscar@34t.tv
Co-Husbands (market premiere)
Dir. Lucía Alemany
Alemany’s second film following the well-received San Sebastian premiere The Innocence, is a comedy aimed at a wider audience.Set in the Pyrenees and framed as a western, Co-Husbands is about a woman who gradually strips two men of their pretenses. Paco León, Ernesto Alterio and Celia Freijeir star in the film that is backed by Telecinco Cinema, udadano Ciskul and Think Studio. Filmax has international sales.
Contact: filmaxint@filmax.com
The Daughter Of The Volcano (work in progress)
Dir. Jenifer de la Rosa
This creative documentary was chosen by the ICAA as one of 10 Promising Spanish Projects in Development at Cannes’ Marche du Film. De la Rosa tells her own story following the aftermath of the eruption of the volcano Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia in which she was left alone at just one week old. She is later adopted by a Spanish family. Now in her thirties, de la Rosa is investigating her origins and what it means to be a daughter and a sister. The project is being produced by Spain’s Auna Producciones and Solita Films, in co-production with Mexico’s Cebolla Films. Auna Produciones is the outfit behind Glorimar Marrero Sánchez’s Spanish-Puerto Rican co-production La Pecera, screening in Málaga’s official section.
Contact: catacabezas95@gmail.com
Foremost By Night (work in progress)
Dir. Victor Iriarte
“This is the story of two women meeting on the banks of the Duero River,” says director Iriarte of what is his second feature. “A film noir with three deaths, two robberies and one flight.” Lola Dueñas (Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver) and Ana Torrent (Alejandro Amenábar’s Thesis), star in the film, a co-production between Isaki Lacuesta’s production label La Termita Films, Atekaleun and CSC Films, with France’s Ukbar Filmes. The film starts as a story of the biological and adoptive mothers of the same boy and evolves into a new take on film noir, inspired by the work of Chinese filmmakers such as Diao Yinan and Jia Zhangke.
Contact: aiereescritura@gmail.com
General States (Latin American focus)
Dir. Mauricio Freyre
Spanish production outfit Tasio is teaming with Peru’s Estudio Rien and Walden Films to co-produce this experimental project from Peruvian-Spanish multidisciplinary artist Mauricio Freyre. The film follows the journey of a colonial seed stolen from the Botanical Garden in Madrid to an Afro-Peruvian village in the south coast of Peru. Shot in both countries, the film aims to work as a metaphorical image of the director’s own life. The world depicted in the film is “between the past, the future and the present,” explains Freyre. “It represents for me an oblique and critical look about the current times, a state of emergency, a call to the insurgency of a world that resists a single existence.” It is being presented in the Latin American Focus showcase.
Contact: tasio.work@gmail.com
I Trust You
Dir. Agustín Toscano
The documentary feature debut of Argentinian filmmaker Toscano following fiction features The Snatch Thief in 2018 and The Owners in 2013, profiles two women imprisoned in the Tucuman Women’s Prison in northern Argentina. They are accused of a crime they say they haven’t committed and sentenced to 20 years in prison for their involvement in the disappearance of a teacher friend of them. “The documented reality is full of mysteries, lies and speculation. What we know as truth eludes the plot of this film and turns into uncertainty and a chilling restlessness,” says Toscano. The film is produced by Juan Pablo Gugliotta of Argentina’s Magma Cine, whose credits include Pablo Fendrik’s Ardor and executive produced by Oriana Castro.
Contact: juanpablo@magmacine.com.ar
The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo (Co-Production Forum)
Dir. Diego Céspedes
Presented at the Venice Film Festival’s Gap-Financing Market in 2022 and at the Sundance Producers Summit, Céspedes’ debut, The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo is now being showcased at Malaga’s Co-Production Forum. “The film questions homosexual love during a pandemic through the eyes of a little girl,” says Céspedes of his contemporary drama with a magical realistic twist. “It speaks about a real-time period, but uses fantastic elements to re-humanise the characters whose lives were taken by the disease, characters of luminous, broken and real gazes, like flamingos.” The film is produced by Giancarlo Nasi’s Quijote Films in association with Mexico’s Varios Lobos, France’s Les Valseurs and Spain’s Irusoin.
Contact: cine@quijotefilms.com
Residents
Dir. Jo Sol
Sol is one of Spain’s most unclassifiable cineastes and this new film is portrays the love triangle between a couple with a privileged life in Mallorca and a prostitute. It explores and challenges beliefs around polyamory and sex work. Residents is a “yearning for that immediate future that women are building,” suggests Sol. “My aim was to develop empowered characters who owe nothing to any man, aren’t victims of oppressive parents or violent husbands and live by themselves without waiting for anyone.” Selected by Tarragona’s festival REC for Málaga WIPs, Residents is a co- production between Shaktimetta Produccions with Moasic Film and Sa Talaia.
Contact: josol69@hotmail.com
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