EXCLUSIVE: Barcelona-based Filmax has boarded Catalan filmmaker Judith Colell’s Frontier, a drama set in the Pyrenees during the Second World War as Jewish refugees try to flee Occupied France.
It focuses on the people of a mountain village on the border between France and Spain trying to help Jewish refugees from the Germans and the Spanish authorities, then ruled by Nazi sympathiser dictator General Franco.
Frontier is a Spain-Belgium co-production between Spain’s Coming Soon Films and Diagonal TV (Banijay Iberia) in Spain and Bulletproof Cupid in Belgium.
Colell won the 2010 Special Jury Prize in San Sebastian for Elisa K, co-directed by Jordi Cadena. She said the film has parallels with 2025.
“Frontier is a dialogue with the present day, talking as it does about people’s involvement and mindset in relation to refugees fleeing war or hunger,” she said. “Some speak out against them, some look the other way and some help. This was the way it was in 1943, just as it is now.”
Frontier stars Miki Esparbé, María Rodríguez Soto, Kevin Janssen, Bruna Cusí and Asier Etxeandía.
For Ivan Diaz, head of international at Filmax, the film “combines the best of commercial and arthouse cinema”.
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