EXCLUSIVE: A Spanish-US filmmaking team spanning Los Angeles and Madrid are teaming up on a slate with a novel twist by using a parallel production model to create English- and Spanish-language versions of each feature for distinct markets.
Los Angeles-based Gerald Fillmore and Spanish producer LyO Media and financier Filmika Audiovisual made waves last month when the English-language version of their first feature, the sub-$2m comedy Face Love, won the audience award at Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles.
The producers had already licenced the Spanish-language version Amor En Toda La Cara to Sky Showtime for Spain and Portugal while the English version was in post. After a string of popular screenings at independent festivals across Europe and the Americas, they are actively working with producers rep and former New Line and Myriad Pictures marketing executive Trish Vasquez to parlay that success into a US deal and international sales.
Vasquez, whose consulting clients have included Warner Bros and Annapurna, will be talking to buyers and potential partners at TIFF: The Market in September.
Building a roster
Face Love/Amor En Toda La Cara is the first in what the partners hope will become a roster of up to two or three comedies and dramas shot each year in the same budget range. Production can occur in multiple locations in Europe and the Americas with trusted partners in Los Angeles and Madrid, and post takes place in Los Angeles and Madrid.
Fillmore wrote, directed and stars in Face Love as a British-Spanish man living in Los Angeles who flies to Madrid to renew his visa and gets stranded by the pandemic thousands of miles away from his girlfriend.
He had been asked by LyO Media’s Jorge Alonso to write a feature after they collaborated on a short. He initially conceived of Face Love as an English-language film, however he quickly realised there was potential to reach a wider audience.
“I was working with a lot of talented bilingual people and got the idea of filming everything twice,” said the multihyphenate, who has directed multiple shorts and television and whose acting credits include Death Inc. for Movistar Plus and Netflix. “In this day and age you have a lot of Latino actors in Los Angeles who speak English with an American accent and speak Spanish with a Mexican accent or Puerto Rican accent or Argentinian accent.”
LyO Media, comprising Alonso and Víctor Corrales, loved the idea and served as producers with Fillmore. “Two native films from inception mean two independent assets, two primary markets, and two separate chains of rights,” Alonso and Corrales said. “This is not localisation; it is multiplication.”
Filmika CEO Andrés Sánchez Pájares saw the appeal and the company played a key role in structuring and arranging the financing through its network of equity investors. “It’s hard even to present one project [to equity investors],” said Sánchez Pájares, who served as executive producer with Horacio Alcalá. “So we saw an opportunity to have two assets in one.”
Production across continents
Production took place in 2024 across locations in the US, Spain, the UK, and Mexico in collaboration with local partners. The filmmakers shot each scene back-to-back with the same cast in English and Spanish. Many of the crew were bilingual and came from the US, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Chile, Venezuela and Colombia.
LyO Media oversaw production in Spain and together with Film More Entertainment coordinated the shoot in the US. The filmmakers kept costs down by accessing production incentives and where possible shooting in real locations.
The team regarded both language versions as a single production and paid their cast and crew accordingly, noting that residuals and royalties can kick in down the line when it is anticipated the split format will create a longer commercial trajectory. They chose not to use AI to dub dialogue, preferring to use human expertise to create two distinct and authentic features in different languages.
The partners are raising financing for their second feature, the romantic comedy We Can Work It Out, which Fillmore will direct and star in as a British man living in Los Angeles who overstays his visa and, desperate not to be separated from his child, enters into a fake marriage with a Latino woman. In the Spanish version Fillmore will play a Spanish man living in Los Angeles.
Commenting on the nascent slate Sánchez Pájares, whose credits include the Disney+ comedy Bellas Artes from directors Mariano Cohn and Andres Duprat of the award-winning Venice selection The Distinguished Citizen, said: We have a slate of films in the comedy and drama side. We don’t think this works for horror because you lose the upside of two different languages. In horror the audience screams and is scared but the experience is not so different. Face Love was a good proof of concept with a very good outcome and we’re thrilled it won the audience award.”
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