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Moving waves on Spain’s film-tv scene when it launched in early May, Beta Fiction Spain has unveiled its first project as a producer, “Dolores,” a portrait of Spain’s Dolores Ibarruri, a worldwide icon of the workers’ movement and struggle against fascism.

The feature film is inspired by “Pasionaria. La vida inesperada de Dolores Ibárruri,” a question-posing non-fiction book by Spanish historian Diego Díaz Alonso published in 2020.

Underscoring Beta Fiction Spain’s ability to attach best-of-class Spanish talent, the screenplay for “Pasionaria” is being penned by two of Spain’s foremost film-tv scribes, Alejandro Hernández, co-writer of Alejandro Amenábar’s “While at War” and Mariano Barroso’s “What the Future Holds,” and Michel Gaztambide, a writer on Julio Medem’s milestone 1992 debut “Cows,” Enrique Urbizu’s best picture Goya winner “No Rest for the Wicked” and Freddy Highmore heist thriller “The Vault,” the second highest-grossing Spanish movie of 2021.

Díaz Alonso...

The 20th century is likely unique in laying claim to three sociopathic dictators whose complete disregard for humanity in either the individual or the collective has justifiably earned them the label “monsters.” Hitler, Mao and Stalin shredded utopian notions of moral progress, their crimes exposing the inadequacy of language to convey the scale of their atrocities while sending psychologists tripping over themselves in an attempt to explain the nature of evil.

True to form, Sergei Loznitsa doesn’t attempt to explain the unfathomable, and he makes language subservient to the image because he knows that words lie. Of course, images lie too — Stalin was an expert on that subject — but when edited to reveal rather than disguise, they have a devastating power. Such is “State Funeral,” an awe-inspiring montage of Stalin’s orchestrated lying-in-state and obsequies, whose impact moves from merely impressive to staggering depending upon the viewer’s knowledge...

Pamplona. Spain — Chile’s “The Cliff,” Argentina’s “In Search of Spring” and Spain’s “The Yellow Bird” feature in a 10-title lineup of drama series projects at the 3rd Pitch CoPro Series, the industry centerpiece of Conecta Fiction, the world’s foremost Europe-Latin American TV co-production and networking forum.

“Strong on genre and historical dramas,” observed Conecta Fiction director Geraldine Gonard of this year’s CoPro Series, the lineup shows its project creators plumbing Spanish and Latin America history via bio series (“Dolores”) and crime (“Lost Toys”) and action (”Spring”) thrillers, suspense drama (“The Saddest Gaol”), and an adventure format (“The Yellow Bird”).

Two series projects are sci-fi, another horror (Dutch series “Greed”) as fantasy genre thrillers grounded or not in social realities, demonstrate a ready appeal both in linear TV and most especially for streaming platforms.

Nearly a third of the projects come from Chile, a sign of...