Spanish production company Viva Films is readying two projects by Pablo Maqueda whose thriller Girl Unknown premiered this year at the Malaga Film Festival and was distributed in Spain and sold internationally by Filmax.
The first is documentary Caro Nanni (Dear Nanni) focusing on the work of Italian director Nanni Moretti. The second is English-language sci-fi thriller Penumbra. Both are scheduled to shoot in 2024.
Clara Galle, the star of Netflix romantic comedy Through My Window and a 2023 Screen International Star Of Tomorrow, will appear as the only actress in Maqueda’s Penumbra, set on the imaginary planet of the title. Galle plays Lux, a geologist sent on a suicidal mission to a planet to live completely alone and in darkness. She will have to deal with darkness, her nightmares and an encounter with an octopod creature. None of the previous missions that have preceded her have survived.
The feature will be shot in English in Madrid, the Canary Islands and Iceland at the end of 2024 and is currently in the financing stage. Viva Films is in talks with international streamers for Penumbra.
Quoting influences of the work of Jonathan Glazer, Alex Garland and Dennis Villeneuve when developing Penumbra, Maqueda says the film “will be extreme visually and in the sound design too finding the balance between what a mainstream audience looks for but challenging it too.”
Before starting the shoot of Penumbra, Maqueda will begin production on the documentary Caro Nanni a follow-up of his study on the work of Werner Herzog in Dear Werner (2020), produced jointly with the Cinémathèque Française and Herzog himself. This time, Maqueda will spotlight Italian director Nanni Moretti. Caro Nanni won the award for best documentary project at the Mallorca Talents Lab of the Atlántida Mallorca Film Festival in July and has taken part in the Spanish Film Academy Residency programme.
The film will be distributed by Filmin and Elástica Films. Shooting will take place until summer 2024 between Spain and Italy. 30 years after the release of Nanni Moretti’s Caro Diario, director Pablo Maqueda will start his own road-movie documentary to explore the work of Moretti. “One of the first things I have to do is learn how to ride a Vespa motorcycle, but it’s part of the process.”
“After Caro Nanni and Penumbra we are also developing three other projects that we hope to announce soon. They won’t be directed by Pablo Maqueda but he will take part as executive producer. We are a creative tandem and we like want to keep working together”, says Viva Films producer Haizea Viana.
Viva Films, run by Maqueda and Viana, is also expanding with the creation of Viva Media, a joint venture with marketing agency The Film Agency led by Sarah Calderón to also take care of the launching and marketing strategies of their films.
No comments yet