This year’s Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival (EMIFF) is platforming local productions and turning the spotlight on the island as a location with its Made in Baleares section.
Juan Sut’s Torna is one of the six features screening in the programme, along with five documentaries, six shorts and two student films.
Guatemala-born, Spain-based Sut shot the film on Mallorca in 2025. It is a comedy about a young man who learns his late father has left him a house on the island. But when he travels to Mallorca, he discovers the property is already occupied, and a comical dispute over who gets to keep it erupts.
Sut, who also produces, stars with Frank Rodríguez Zaragoza, who also has a producer credit.
Torna exemplifies the ambitions of festival founder and director Sandra Lipski, who set up the festival as a way of promoting the island as a shooting destination to international filmmakers and subsequently provide a platform for their work.
“We are seeing the fruits of the labour that we have put in for the last few years, where people have met at the festival and then made films that are now screening here,” says Lipski. “This mixing of everyone together, opening doors and producing dialogues with people from nationalities you might never have thought of, is a source of pride for the festival.”
Productions filming in Mallorca can claim a 30% tax deduction on the first €1m of qualifying expenditure and 25% on the remainder, under Spain’s national audiovisual tax incentive framework.
For international delegates, the municipality of Calvià in Mallorca is hosting a tour of several sites across the southwestern municipality, including Finca Galatzó, a 1,401-hectare historic country estate, to show their potential as settings for future film and TV projects.
The Balearic Islands Filmmakers Association (ACIB) will also celebrate its 20th anniversary with a party in Calvià.
Industry programme
This year’s industry programme includes a Producers Club panel titled ‘Filming on the Balearic Islands’. Panellists include Palma Pictures deputy head of production Pilar Amer Fuster, Mallorcan writer, producer and director Toni Bestard, who shot Render on Mallorca and Menorca, and German director Bora Dagtekin, who filmed The Perfect Holiday in Mallorca last year.
Dagtekin’s comedy drama is also screening during the festival. Zaragoza, the star of Torna, will join the panel in his capacity as a producer.
Talking points will range from securing funding and permits to finding standout locations, booking equipment and hiring the best local crew, along with the latest trends and practical tips for shooting on the Balearic Islands.
One of the festival’s annual highlights, Mallorca Go!, is an invite-only tour that takes visiting international filmmakers, producers, directors, writers and cinematographers around the island to showcase the variety of locations on offer.
“We have the invitees meet with Palma Pictures, our partner and one of the biggest production houses here on the island,” Lipski says. “We show them what equipment we have on the island, we introduce them to the trilingual crews, and they take a tour of Palma Pictures’ studios.”
The tour will also highlight the island’s infrastructure, including Palma’s international airport, cast and crew accommodation, as well as locations including beaches, mountains, medieval towns, luxury coastal villas and countryside estates.
Elsewhere in the programme, producer Fabian Jöst will host the panel ‘Green Merit Media: Cut Film Emissions, Save Money’. Jöst is managing director and service producer at production services company Mallorca Specials, co-creator of the Island Code and a Certified European Green Consultant at Green Merit Media.
He will present a practical approach to sustainable filmmaking in Mallorca, built on his Green Merit guide, showing how productions can cut their carbon footprint and lower costs at the same time.
EMIFF runs from October 28 to November 4.
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