Carmina o Revienta, a winner of last Malaga festival, creates great controversy and expectation with new release model.

As of yesterday, 7,000 people paid at VoD site filmin.es to watch Carmina o revienta, the first and much anticipated feature of popular actor Paco León. Today the film [pictured] arrives to 20 cinemas all over Spain a film with a release plan regarded to “revolutionise,” the sector according to an enthusiastic press and not so happy distribution and exhibition sector.

Yet is not the first time a multi platform release is planned in Spain. Last week Marley, a documentary by Kevin Macdonald, opened both in cinemas and at the online platform. Leon’s move is expected to have a great impact since it was regarded as a potential big success in the last Málaga Film Festival, where Carmina won the jury and audience awards. León is very popular in Spain thank to the show Aida, an audience favourite for 8 years.

“I hope he will have a great success” has said this morning Enrique González Macho, president of the Spanish Cinema Academy and owner of Alta Films distributor and Renoir cinemas. “We offered him to distribute the film and he preferred to make it his own way,” Macho said.

Leon has accused the industry of being blind to the new game in cinema business and not responding enough to audience needs. With this move, León claims to be fighting against piracy and finding his film a broader audience after a test he did among his Twitter fans. The controversy has generated a great number of articles and debate in the Spanish mainstream media.

Despite the refusal of major players, Carmina will open in 20 cinemas across Spain, most of them in Andalusia and also Madrid and Barcelona, distributed by the small company La luna de Tantán, based in Zaragoza.

Carmina o revienta, a mixture of fiction and documentary, is set in the inner and more impoverished Andalusia and it is a portrait of the own family of Paco León. Carmina, a heavy smoker, is a strong and vulgar woman fights to survive to burglars and his own drunk husband. Comedy and drama meet in this film with a flavour of Kusturica and Spanish picaresque with flamenco.

Topics