Mafiz, the industry sector of the Málaga Film Festival, which closed on Sunday March 19, attracted its highest numbers of attendees to date, up 54% on last year.
In total. 1,897 industry players came from 64 countries, with a gender parity of 963 men and 934 women.
International promotion platform Spanish Screenings Content registered the highest number of participants at 206 buyers and producers. Overall by sector Mafiz attracted 1,095 producers, 206 buyers, 70 festivals delegates, 26 sales agents and 36 exhibitors and local distributors.
The Málaga Festival Fund & Co-Production Event project (Maff) scored 152 attendants and 568 one-to-one meetings around 39 Ibero-American projects.
The response from buyers has been generally upbeat: they watched many more Ibero-American films than they can at other events such as Berlin’s European Film Market and the Cannes Marche.
Distribution deals concluded in Malaga inlcuded The Walt Disney Co./Star Distribution’s acquisition of Latin American rights to David Bisbano’s feature animation Dalia And The Red Book, while Spanish-Canadian sales outfit Pink Parrot annouunced pre-sales on Steve Majaury and Andrea Sebastián’s 4 Days Before Christmas, including to Germany (Splendid) and UK (Kaleidoscope).
Filmax bolstered its sales slate with Miquel Romans’s Second World War drama Ashes In The Sky, Victor García Leon’s comedy One Hell Of A Holiday!, and Omar Al Abdul Razzak’s first-person coming-of-age story Killing Crabs.
At Animation Day! Salvador Simó and Li Jianping’s €28m Spain-China co-production Dragonkeeper generated plenty of buzz. It is co-produced by Spain’s Guardián de Dragones and China Film Animation. The UK’s SC Films International is handling sales and has done deals to Baltic States, Czech Republic, Former Yugoslavia, Hungary, Israel, Poland and Romania already.
Spanish sales agents including Vicente Canales at sales agent Film Factory expressed satisfaction with the high number of buyers at the Spanish Screenigns and Filmax’s Iván Díaz was pleased with the reception of his slate, especially Lucía Alemany’s Co-Husbands. Both expect to conclude deals soon.
Antonio Saura, head of Latido Films, said: “The market is very important for Spain. Good meetings have been held and buyers are satisfied. This year I have noticed a bigger interest in the Málaga competiton films, so there is a synergy that was missing last year. Some things should be improved, but the balance is very positive.”
In further industry news, production outfit KaBoGa boarded Condensed Milk, the next film by Argentian auteur Anahí Berneri; FilmSharks took world sales rights on Inés París’ The Forgotten Killings, a period thriller set in Valencia in the 1950s and Disney’s Star Distribution acquired Latin American rights to Pablo Solarz’s Malaga main competition nominee I Woke Up With Dream.
Kattia G. Zúñiga announced her second directorial effort Raging to be produced by Alejo Crisóstomo at Chile’s Ceibita Films, and Carlos Marques-Marcet is readying They Will Be Dust, a musical drama that tackes the debate around euthanasia.
Paraguay will be the country in focus for next year’s Mafiz. Film and TV production is a new focus for the small country. An audiovisual law came into force in 2019 and a national film institute, INAP, run by Christian Andrés Gayoso., was founded in 2021. One of Paraguay’s biggest filmmakers is the director Marcelo Martinessi, whose debut The Heiressess impressed at Berlin in 2018.
No comments yet