The world premiere of Movistar Plus+’s period comedy drama The Short Life (La Vida Breve) will headline the second edition of South International Series Festival, which takes place in Cádiz in southern Spain from October 25-30. It will showcase 47 series, including 12 world premieres and 15 Spanish premieres.
Created by Cristóbal Garrido and Adolfo Valor, and starring Leonor Watling and Javier Gutiérrez, The Short Life is set during the brief reign of Spain’s King Louis I. It is the only world premiere in competition.
Two competitions, fiction and non-fiction, have been created this year. BetaSeries CEO Rémi Tereszkiewicz heads the fiction jury; Goya award-winning screenwriter Ángeles González Sinde will preside over the non-fiction line-up. The three non-compettiive sections are Panaroma, Jewelry and South.
Series in the 12-title fiction strand include This Town, from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, a co-production between Banijay’s Kudos and Nebulastar for the BBC, in collaboration with Mercury Studios, it follows four young people who form a band in the 1980s as a way of escaping every day life. It is directed by Paul Whittington.
Further anticipated screenings include the Portuguese black comedy thriller Dogpack, sold internationally by Arquipélago Filmes, and Oderbruk, crime series with fantastical touches set in a sparsely populated region of Germany. The latter is produced by Syrreal Entertainment, in co-production with ARD Degeto and CBS Studios, it is co-directed by Christian Alvart and Adolfo J. Kolmerer.
Also screening in the fiction competition is Nautilus, produced by UK’s Moonriver and Seven Stories for Disney Entertainment. It is created by James Dormer, known for his work on Medici: Masters Of Florence and Beowulf, and is based on Jules Verne’s classic ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’. It explores the personal history of the enigmatic Captain Nemo
The non-fiction competition includes Paco De Lucía: Flamenco Legacy, produced by Womack Studios for Canal Sur, and On Thin Ice: Putin vs. Greenpeace, about the 2013 Greenpeace expedition that unveiled the dangers of oil drilling in the Arctic, produced by the UK’s Curve Media for the BBC.
Honorary awards will be given to US screenwriter David Shore, creator of Sony TV-ABC’s The Good Doctor and Fox’s medical procedural House; Spanish actress María Adánez; and Turkish star Can Yaman. Shore will also host a masterclass in the industry programme.
Highlights in the non-competitive sections include Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s Querer, which will feature in the Jewelry sidebar. Produced by Movistar Plus+ in collaboration with Feelgood Media and Kowalski Films, the series follows a woman who sues her abusive husband. It screened first at San Sebastian last month.
Meanwhile, Mediaset España’s The Marquess depicts the mid-1970s Los Galindos murders in Seville, is playing in the South strand.
The industry programme will provide a platform to analyse new laws and regulations and address issues such as how the industry can safely reap the benefits of Artificial Intelligence, the ethical and legal limits of true crime and new developments in financing models.
A series of creative talks with international figures will include Alberto Caballero, and Diego San José, talking about the art of comedy, as well as a masterclass on crafting compelling storytelling from screenwriter Shore.
South Series will close with I Spit On Your Graves (Escupiré Sobre Vuestras Tumbas), a Caribbean-set thriller based on Boris Vian’s 1946 novel produced by Colombia’s Caracol TV.
SISF is co-financed by the Andalucía ERDF, the European Commission, and the Andalusian regional government. It is also supported by Mediaset España and Movistar Plus+.
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