With six films featuring Catalan talent at Cannes Film Festival and a slew of upcoming Catalan projects being touted at the Marché du Film, this year’s line-up showcases the sheer range of creativity and wide international outlook of producers and directors from the Spanish region.
Leading the charge is Romería, the third feature from Catalan writer/director Carla Simon, whose Alcarràs won the Berlinale’s Golden Bear in 2022. Romería is her first time in Competition at Cannes. Like her previous work, the film is inspired by her own life story and follows a young girl who travels to Galicia to meet her biological father’s family for the first time.
mk2 Films is handling international sales on the title, for which Catalonia-based Dos Soles Media is a producer, along with Elastica Films and Ventall Cinema.
“We are enjoying a moment of great maturity for our creative talent,” says Dos Soles Media producer Angels Masclans of the Catalan talent on display in Cannes. “There’s a new generation of women filmmakers who are here to stay and are extremely diverse, but there are also women producers who give their all with ambition and rigour. Government support has been instrumental too.”
Also in Competition is Oliver Laxe’s Sirat, for which Catalonia’s Uri Films is a producer alongside Filmes Da Ermida, streaming platform Movistar Plus+, the Almodovar brothers’ El Deseo and France’s 4+4 Productions. Sales are handled by The Match Factory.
Laxe won the Fipresci prize at Cannes in 2010 for You All Are Captains and the Un Certain Regard jury prize for Fire Will Come in 2019, and his latest tells the story of a father, played by Catalan actor Sergi Lopez, who arrives at a rave in the mountains of south Morocco in search of his missing daughter.
Beyond the Competition, Catalan producers are represented in further festival titles. Albert Serra’s Barcelona-based Andergraun Films is one of the producers of Filipino director Lav Diaz’s Magellan, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, which is playing in Cannes Premiere. The international co-production brings Andergraun together with Portugal’s Rosa Filmes, the Philippines’ Black Cap Pictures and Ten17P, Spain’s El Viaje Films, Taiwan’s Volos Films, and France’s Lib Films and AKP21.
Additionally, Barcelona-based BTeam Prods is a co-producer on Critics’ Week title Sleepless City with Spain’s Sintagma Films, Buena Pinta Media and Encanta Films, and France’s Les Valseurs and Tournellovision. The first feature by Guillermo Galoe is about a teenage Roma boy who lives in the largest illegal slum in Europe on the outskirts of Madrid.
Rising Catalan talent is also present in the Directors’ Fortnight section, with the short +10k from director Gala Hernandez Lopez, about a 21 year-old who dreams of earning big. Finally, The Sorceress Echo by Marc Camardons, a student at Catalan film school ESCAC, is screening at La Cinef, the official selection of the festival that presents work by film students.
Going to market
A total of 70 Catalonia-based companies are attending the Marché to represent the region’s vibrant production scene. Market screenings include Filmax premieres of Adria Garcia’s animated film The Treasure Of Barracuda and Carlos Solano’s comedy drama Leo & Lou; Irene Iborra’s stop-motion animation Olivia And The Invisible Earthquake, handled by France’s Pyramide Films; Polo Menarguez’s The Talent, sold by Film Factory Entertainment; and Avelina Prat’s The Portuguese House, sold by Bendita Film Sales.
Five projects with Catalan talent are being showcased in various market programmes, while six Catalan productions will also be represented in the Short Film Corner.
Genre feature Who Knows? by Carlo Padial will screen in the Frontieres co-production market organised by Fantasia International Film Festival, and David Casademunt’s 1999 will be presented within the Fantastic 7 umbrella that includes the Sitges, Bifan, Cairo, Guadalajara, Hong Kong, SXSW and Tallinn film festivals.
Two Catalan documentaries have been selected for the Docs-in-Progress section of Cannes Docs: We Were A Great Family, based on home movies covering nearly six decades of memories and Spanish history, which is being sold by Begin Again Films; and The Flight Of The Stork, about a young woman of Algerian descent who explores her relationship with her mother as she prepares a trip to Algeria, which Agencia Freak is selling.
Meanwhile Catalan project Face Of Grace, directed by Anna Marti Domingo and Laura Santos Marti, is taking part in the Focus Copro section as part of Cinéma de Demain.
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