The third edition of Spanish talent development hub ECAM Forum is taking place this week (June 9-11), showcasing 10 features in post-production and 15 projects in development to the international industry.
“The Forum is designed to stay selective without becoming closed-off,” says the event’s coordinator Alberto Valverde, who explains it has been inspired by “boutique industry gatherings including Les Arcs and the Marrakech Atlas Workshops”.
“Our approach is friendly and curated,” he continues, “ensuring a natural match between projects and guests.”
The Forum is built around two core strands. The Last Push will present 10 features in post-production seeking festival premieres, sales representation and international distribution, with first cuts screened to buyers, sales agents and programmers.
Films To Come will platform 15 early-stage features seeking finance, co-production partners and international exposure, with one receiving the Screen International ECAM Forum Award.
Scroll down for the lineups
Twelve short films and 15 series projects are also being showcased.
This year’s delegates include executives from European sales and distribution outfits such as Charades, Le Pacte, Alpha Violet, Square Eyes, Totem Films, Pyramide, New Europe Film Sales, Loco Films, Indie Sales, Goodfellas, We Are Paradise and MoreThan Films.
International producers looking for coproduction opportunities in attendance will include RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira, Eye Eye Pictures’s Dyveke Bjørkly Graver, Petit Chaos’s Thomas Hakim, 4 A 4 Productions’ Andrea Queralt and Pandora Film’s Christoph Friedel.
Festival programmes from Cannes Critics’ Week and Directors’ Fortnight, Venice’s Giornate degli Autori, the Berlinale, Sundance, FIDMarseille and Morelia will also be at the Forum.
Teixeira, alongside filmmakers Milagros Mumenthaler and Rodrigo Sorogoyen, will take part in talks and masterclasses. The Forum is also screening a retrospective of the films of Locarno Golden Leopard-winning filmmaker Mumenthaler.
The Last Push
The postproduction lineup includes the next features from directors whose films have recently played major festivals and won awards.
Argentinian filmmaker Federico Luis’s The Opponents won the short film Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, following his feature Simón Of The Mountain, which won the grand prize of the 2024 Cannes Critics’ Week.
He is attending ECAM Forum with his second solo feature, Pehuen’s Birthday In Spain, about a young man grappling with displacement, identity and belonging. Argentina’s Un Puma is producing the film.
Costa Rican filmmaker Paz Fábrega, whose Cold Water Of The Sea won Rotterdam’s Tiger award this year, is in Madrid to present To The Future, an intimate drama about personal transformation and uncertain futures. The film is produced by her company Temporal Films alongside Spain’s Edna Cinema and Uruguay’s La Mayor.
Spanish duo Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado have been selected with The Fortunate Isles, a historical drama set in the 15th-century Canary Islands amid social unrest and colonial expansion, produced by Spain’s El Viaje Films and La Banda Negra with Greece’s Asterisk*.
Giron and Delgado’s credits include They Carry Death, which premiered in Venice and later played San Sebastián and Rotterdam in 2021.
Films To Come
The selection of early-stage works brings together established auteurs with emerging voices, including five feature debuts.
Gala Hernández López, whose The Mechanics Of Fluids won the 2024 César for best documentary short, brings Magnetic Animals, a gothic sci-fi drama linking a zoologist in near-future Berlin with an infertile 18th-century French aristocrat through mysterious pregnancies, animal magnetism and a shared fear of motherhood.
Víctor Iriarte follows Foremost By Night, winner of the Fipresci prize at the Valladolid film festival in 2023, with Snow Country, a sci-fi drama about a Japanese-Uruguayan migrant who moves to Tokyo, encounters a robot double of his girlfriend and journeys to Japan’s ’snow country’ in search of identity.
Palestinian filmmaker Suha Arraf, whose credits include Villa Touma, has a new project called Chentian, and Yorgos Goussis, whose Magnetic Fields was Greece’s Oscar submission in 2023, is attending with a project called African Grey.
Five of the projects in Films To Come have previously participated in the ECAM Incubator. Previous Incubator projects include Five Little Wolves and 20,000 Species Of Bees, which both went on to premiere at the Berlinale.
Additionally, five projects have been selected for Films To Come that have come through ECAM’s The Incubator programme for emerging producers: Paolo Natale’s Our Raised Skin, Eire Cid’s The Imaginary Kings, Victor Diago’s The Unmoving Hands, Laura Obradors’ The Woodworm and Miguel Machetti’s Copy.
ECAM Forum is also hosting the second edition of FINDE (Financing, Investment and Independent Cinema), connecting independent producers with private investors and financiers. Participants include executives from Mubi, Arte France Cinéma, Doha Film Institute, Together Fund, IPR.VC and the Prada Film Fund.
The Community and City of Madrid, Acción Cultural Española, DAMA and the Institut Français de España back ECAM Forum.
The Last Push 2026
All synopses provided by ECAM Forum
Cinemania
Dir: Marc Ferrer
Prods: DVEIN Films, DEBUT Films.
A struggling Barcelona filmmaker and his dysfunctional family pursue love, desire and escape in a satirical ensemble comedy.
Farewell, Rivers
Dir: Sebastián Uría
Prod. Tamboura Films
In Galicia’s Ancares mountains, illness, ageing, rural abandonment, two horses and a wandering she-bear move towards uncertain futures.
Love Is The Monster
Dir:. Neto Villalobos Brenes
Prods La Sucia Centroamericana, Clara Films, Cine Infinito, Expansiva Cine
In a tropical dystopia, a grandmother fighting to remain close to her granddaughter faces disaster when the child is kidnapped.
Pehuen’s Birthday In Spain
Dir: Federico Luis
Prods: Un Puma
Actor Pehuén Pedre travels from Argentina to Spain with his filmmaker friend, hoping to reunite with the mother who abandoned him.
Al Futuro
Dir:Paz Fábrega
Prods: Temporal Films, Edna Cinema, La Mayor Cine.
Blending documentary and fiction, a filmmaker and mother struggles with caregiving, financial insecurity and a son who can mysteriously hold his breath.
The Nights,
Dir: Ana Bovino
Prod: Navega Cine.
A gifted storyteller from Buenos Aires’ margins transforms her memories into a tender, humorous contemporary reimagining of Scheherazade.
The Fortunate Isles
Dirs: Helena Girón, Samuel Delgado
Prods: El Viaje, Asterisk*, La Banda Negra. In the 16th-century Canary Islands, an enslaved woman searches for water as rebellion threatens her aristocratic owner’s rule.
Undefined Things II
Dir: María Aparicio. Prod. La Buena Hora, Las Flores.
An Argentinian filmmaker wandering alone through Madrid meets a historian researching social reformer Juan Bialet Massé.
Letters From An Inner Exile
Di:. Eloy Enciso
Prods: Filmika Galaika, Umbracle Cine.
A photographer investigating letters exchanged under early Francoism interrupts her work after a death forces her home to confront an inheritance.
The Indies
Dirs. Pauline Julier, Nicolas Chapoulier
Prods: Alina Film, Lastor Media.
During a series of 17th-century European wars, two soldiers and a Spanish nobleman carry a royal portrait towards Versailles as the modern world emerges.
FILMS TO COME
Copy
Dir. Miguel Machetti
Prod: Gelatina Películas.
A grieving assistant director becomes fascinated by a legendary actress returning to cinema after being accused of murdering a fellow performer.
Our Raised Skin
Dir. Paolo Natale
Prod: Mubox Studio, Eclettica
An autobiographical documentary examines masculinity, body image and a compulsive eating disorder transmitted through three generations of men.
The Imaginary Kings
Dir: Eire Cid
Prod:. Brava. In working-class Vigo, a grieving teenager must choose between his violent male friendships and the possibility of love and change
The Woodworm
Dir: Laura Obradors
Prod: Espurna Films
A withdrawn 16-year-old’s summer with her artist father is disrupted by the arrival of a French exchange student who awakens desire and conflict.
The Unmoving Hands
Di:. Víctor Diago
Prods: Diacrònic, Boogaloo Films
A young man who procures sexual victims for his life-draining father falls in love with the latest intended prey.
Wandering Little Dove
Dir: Enrique Buleo
Prod: Cabiria Film Media
An Ecuadorian woman working as an unconvincing horror attraction searches, with darkly comic results, for a purpose in life.
The Bastard Daughter
Dir: Olivia Delcán
Prods: Solita Films, Sumendi Filmak
After her mother’s death, an exhausted Menorcan car saleswoman questions her family, her life and her growing obsession with singer Nino Bravo.
The Noise Of Long Distances
Dir: Leinad Pájaro de la Hoz
Prod: BØLIER Films
An elderly Colombian woman journeys towards the Magdalena River after learning that her long-lost son has become a caiman.
Chentian
Dir: Suha Arraf
Prod: Mayana Films, Odeh Films.
Two Palestinian sisters-in-law confront widowhood, forbidden desire, patriarchy and Israeli land confiscation, gradually finding strength in one another.
Handen
Dir: Ángel Filgueira
Prod: Sétima
A Galician writer takes a job on a Dutch-Belgian farm, where exhausting labour gradually erases his relationships and literary ambitions.
Magnetic Animals
Dir: Gala Hernández López
Prod: New Sight
A near-future zoologist under pronatalist pressure is mysteriously linked to an infertile French aristocrat subjected to animal magnetism in 1786.
African Grey
Dir: Yorgos Goussis
Prod: Portokal Films
A grieving locksmith searching for a missing parrot uncovers a criminal scheme targeting lonely and vulnerable people.
Snow Country
Dir: Víctor Iriarte
Prods: Inicia Films, 4A4 Productions
A Japanese-Uruguayan man lost in Tokyo meets a robot double of his girlfriend and travels with her towards Japan’s Snow Country.
The Garden Of Delights
Dir: Rafaela Camelo
Prod: Moveo Films, Apoteótica Cinematográfica
A lesbian couple discovers their new home produces aphrodisiac honey during orgasm and may be a living organism with plans for them.
The Phantom Plot
Dir: Nicolás Schujman
Prod: 36 Caballos.
A grieving Buenos Aires actor possessed by his father’s dybbuk must survive a chaotic exorcism before the spirit takes over his body.THe
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