Malaga Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentLatido Films, one of Spain’s biggest vendors of Spanish-language arthouse and crossover movies, has swooped on international sales rights to “Unfinished Affairs” (“La Maniobra de la Tortuga”).Domestic distribution in Spain is handled by A Contracorriente Films, one of Spain’s top independent producer-distributors.World premiering in main competition at this year’s Malaga Festival, “Unfinished Affairs” marks the second feature from Juan Miguel del Castillo whose debut, 2015’s “Food and Shelter,” proved one of the breakout Spanish debuts of the last decade.A modern-day part of Spain’s great social-issue arthouse film tradition, “Food and Shelter” cast Natalia de Molina (“Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed”) as a single mother threatened with eviction and struggling to put food on the table for her 10-year-old son.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentIn a sign of just how much the film and TV industry has evolved over the past few years, 25% of participants at the Malaga Festival’s new Spanish Screenings XXL will represent in one way or another VOD platforms, the organizers announced Tuesday.After taking place in November 2020 and October 2021 during two years of pandemic, Malaga’s leg of the 2022 Spanish Screenings XXL will take place over March 21-24 as part of an even larger Malaga Festival Industry Zone (MAFIZ).In line with the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris a fortnight ago, the event will expand to take in not only recent Spanish movies but series, animation and, in the case of the Spanish Screenings, straight to digital formats. “Not just features get sold these days,” said Malaga Festival director Juan Antonio Vigar.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentSpain’s Malaga and San Sebastian Film Festivals are launching a new and vastly fortified version of the Spanish Screenings, the Malaga Festival’s traditional showcase of recent Spanish movies screened to international buyers.Recast as the Spanish Screenings XXL, the event will run March 21-24 at Spain’s Malaga Festival, then segue to September’s San Sebastian event. Over 2022 and 2023, a Spanish Screenings on Tour event will take place at a destination outside Spain, targeting Eastern Europe and Asia.The Spanish Screenings’ total budget for 2022 and 2023 combined will be €4.20 million ($4.74 million), Miquel Iceta, Spain’s Minister for Culture and Sport, said Wednesday at a presentation of the Screenings in Madrid.

Emiliano Granada After having won the Silver Biznaga for best documentary director at this June’s Malaga Festival with “El Father Plays Himself,” which screens now at the Spanish Screenings, director-cinematographer Mo Scarpelli is leaping into fiction with her new project, “A Song That Slays.” Following a number of eye-catching doc titles that have always generated festival buzz  whether “El Father Plays Himself” at last year’s Visions du Réel, “Anbessa” at the 2019 Berlinale and Frame by

Emiliano Granada Bowing at June’s Malaga Film Festival in Spain, where it swept three prizes in its edgier Zonacine sidebar – best film, actor (Jorge Motos) and its Audience Award – Spaniard Alex Montoya’s second feature “Lucas” has been picked up by Spain’s Filmin SVOD service, the country’s biggest streaming platform for art pics and upscale TV series.International sale rights on “Lucas” are handled by Begin Again Films.The acquisition continues a close relationship between the Spanish

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentNo event in the world offers a broader spread of recent movies from Spain than the Malaga de Cine – Spanish Screenings. Unspooling online over Oct.

Emilio Mayorga “My Emptiness and I,”“The Barbaric,” and “Saudade Became Home Inside” has all won big at a key industry section at Spain’s Malaga Festival, its Work in Progress, which first shone a light on such titles as “The Platform,” Netflix’s most-watched movie in the U.S.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Leading Barcelona production-distribution company Filmax has picked up the international rights to “Ama,” the directorial debut of Spain’s Julia de Paz Solvas. The mother-daughter drama bowed at Spain’s 24th Malaga Film Festival this week, where it plays in official competition.

Jamie Lang Leading Italian sales agent and production company The Open Reel has acquired the rights to “15 Horas” from filmmaker Judith Colell (“Elisa K”), world premiering on Tuesday June 8 in the main competition at the Malaga Film Festival, with two more screenings scheduled for the following day.Colell long ago established herself as an important voice in the Spanish film industry chorus when in 1996 she received a Spanish Academy Goya Award nomination for her short film “Escrito en la

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentThe Malaga Festival’s Spanish Screenings, the only dedicated Spanish film sales and promotion market in Spain, has locked dates on the fall’s increasingly packed fest-market calendar, announcing it will run Oct.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentOne of Southern Europe’s fastest growing industry events, Spain’s Malaga Festival is pushing back its industry centerpiece Spanish Screenings from June in order to be able to celebrate an on-site event.“Last year and this, we’ve learnt not to make [longterm] plans.

Anna Marie de la Fuente In keeping with the Festival de Málaga’s drive to continually evolve and introduce new initiatives, the festival in southern Spain has launched Hack MAFIZ Málaga, a new industry event aimed at digital content creators.Applicants will have to go through a gauntlet of audiovisual challenges to secure their participation, which culminates in the festival’s 24th edition, to be held June 4-13.Ultimately, the goal is for the event to become a key gathering for digital content

Ann-Marie Corvin International buyers were shown another preview of director Marta Lallana’s sophomore feature, “Muyeres,” at the Malaga Spanish Screenings this week.Set to go into production next year, the black and white documentary that explores song preservation in the northern Asturian region of Spain, the work-in-progress received its first festival outing this spring, taking part in Malaga’s virtual WIP showcase.Last year’s winners included Spanish horror movie “The Platform,” which went

Pablo Sandoval Producer-director Kristina Konrad’s Berlin-based Weltfilm has boarded “Amateur,” the feature debut of Spaniard Martin Gutiérrez which won the top Malaga Festival Prize for best Spanish film at this Spring’s Malaga WIP pix in post competition.Konrad, one of the jury members for Spanish titles at Malaga WIP, along with Berlin Panorama director Paz Lázaro and Gijón Film Festival programer Ricardo Apilánez, signed up to co-produce “Amateur” after the Malaga WIP showcase.Written by

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentFew figures in the Spanish film industry dress as formerly, or as well, as Malaga Intl. Film Festival director Juan Antonio Vigar.

Ed Meza @edmezavarIn “La Botera” (“Boat Rower Girl”), which plays at the Malaga Spanish Screenings, Argentine filmmaker Sabrina Blanco tells the story of Tati, a teenage girl growing up in Isla Maciel, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires situated along the banks of a polluted river, where she lives with a neglectful and troubled single father.Angered when her father, a local boatsman who ferries passengers across the river, decides to sell his boat, Tati sets out to learn how

Ann-Marie Corvin Making its bow at the Malaga Festival’s Spanish Screenings is “Trains Bound for the Sea,” the feature debut from directorial duo Hugo Obregón and Manuel Álvarez-Diestro.The film tells the story of Lee Fan Bao – firstly through his grandfather’s quest to find him a suitable bride and later through the grandson’s experiences of finding love in London.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentLaunched in 1998 to promote Spanish cinema, the Malaga Festival once promised a fantastic shot of Spring sunshine, a competition whose winners were maybe unlucky not to get to Cannes, an annual state of the business pronouncement from Spain’s producer association Fapae, and screaming fans around the red carpet, proving Spain had a new, TV-based star system.That in itself was an achievement.

Ann-Marie Corvin Spanish sales agent Agencia Freak has picked up the international rights to Malaga Film Festival featured documentary “Drowning Letters” (“Cartas Mojadas”), director Paula Palacios’ debut feature on Europe’s half decade-long refugee crisis in the Mediterranean Sea.Produced by Madrid-based Morada Films, and one of 20 titles making their market bow at the Malaga Spanish Screenings, the 81-minute feature aims to set all the news coverage about the crisis into context, using a

Jamie Lang Returning for its fourth year, although necessarily postponed from its traditional March dates by the COVID-19 pandemic, Malaga Film Festival’s Spanish Screenings will take place Nov.

Glasgow with husband Frank, 50, on a Ryanair flight from Malaga Airport after a two-week family holiday in Fuengirola which they had to cut short by four days.She said: “Frank’s a firefighter and he needs to get back to work soon so we’ve ended up buying new flights back which have cost us 400 euros with the luggage.“We’re not going to get that money back.

Jamie Lang Antonio Banderas is set to host the 2021 Spanish Academy Goya Awards on Feb. 27 in Banderas’ hometown of Malaga.

By Jamie Lang

MADRID — Cecilia Roth starrer “Alice,” Ana Piterbarg’s “La Habitación Blanca,” Brazil’s sure-to-be controversial “Princesa,” and Mexico’s “Intersex” look like potential standouts in the just-announced movie project pitching platform MAFF Online by Filmarket Hub, part of the biggest push by far into a virtual marketplace made by any festival in the Spanish-speaking world.

MADRID — Spain’s Malaga Festival, the country’s biggest festival dedicated to Spanish and Latin American films and TV, has been postponed, the Malaga Town Hall announced Tuesday.