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The Society Of The Snow has garnered 13 nominations, followed by Close Your Eyes and Jokes & Cigarettes with 11.

Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species Of Bees leads the nominations for Spain’s prestigious Goya awards, which will be presented on February 10, 2024.

20,000 Species Of Bees premiered in competition at Berlin, going on to win the Silver Bear for best performance for Sofía Otero, playing an eight-year-old girl who spends a summer working in the Basque Country’s beehives while exploring her identity.

The film scored 15 nominations, including best film, best director and four nods in the acting categories.

Ja Bayona’s...

As earning significant profile for shows in a packed marketplace has become one of Europe’s most pressing industry concerns, a new and ambitious TV series festival is launching in Cadiz, southern Spain, as an initiative of Mediaset España and backed by shows from other key players on the Spanish TV scene, such as The Mediapro Studio and Movistar Plus+.

Speakers from the Spanish-speaking world take in writer-director-producer Armando Bo (“El Presidente”), an Oscar winning scribe for “Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance,” and Daniel Écija, an executive producer on key hits in the last decade in Spain such as the multi-genre free-to-air series “Estoy Vivo,” and “Locked Up” “(Vis a vis,” a key into its lift-off into premium drama selling worldwide.

Some titles screening at Cadiz are already celebrated, such as Russell T. Davies’ “Nolly,” starring Helena Bonham-Carter.

Also in the Coming Next section is Norwegian political satire “Power Play,...

The Disney-backed “How to Be a Carioca,” from “Ice Age” creator Carlos Saldanha, and “Allende, the Thousand Days,” an adventurous Chilean-Spanish pick-up from Spanish pubcaster Rtve, will both world premiere at Iberscreenings, catching new evolution on the Spain-Portugal-Latin America TV scene.

A comedy, showrun by Saldanha, consolidating his exploration of live action after Netflix’s 2021 “Invisible City,” “Carioca,” whose first episode will be screened at I&pi, is produced by the Star Original Productions label, bowing soon on Star+ in Latin America and on the Walt Disney Company’s streaming services globally, such as Disney+ Spain.

An international co-production, “Allende, the Thousand Days” was originated by Chile’s Parox (“Invisible Heroes”), partnered by Spain’s Mediterráneo Media Entertainment and Argentina’s Aleph, Mente Colectiva and HD Argentina. A character focused chronicle of Allende’s three years in government before Pinochet’s 1973 military coup, the series has been acquired for broadcast by Chile’s Tvn,...

Carlos Saldanha’s Disney comedy series How to be a Carioca will screen for the first time at the Iberseries & Platino Industria event in October.

The first episode of the Star Original Productions-badged comedy will play at the fest, which is held in Madrid. Saldanha and co-creator Joana Mariani will feature on a panel for the show alongside Leonardo Aranguibel, VP of Production, Head of Production Operations and Strategy, The Walt Disney Company Latin America.

The Portuguese-language comedy series follows an American writer who has to learn the quirks of Rio de Janeiro’s people after moving to the Brazilian city.

The show is set to launch on Star+ in Latin America and Disney’+’s streaming services, including Disney+ worldwide.

How to be a Carioca follows an American writer who has to learn the quirks of Rio de Janeiro’s people after moving to the Brazilian city. It stars the...

Five Catalan movies made Cannes Festival’s cut, six were selected for Marché du Film sections. Details and other top Catalan movies on the Croisette:

“20,000 Species of Bees,” (Estibaliz Urresola)

One of the big winners at Berlin, taking Leading Performance, and two other key prizes, and now healthy racking up healthy sales, including a Film Movement U.S. pickup, “Bees” builds from a naturalistic base – a family off for a village summer holiday – to become a moving an ode to women’s freedom. Produced out of Barcelona by Valérie Delpierre’s Inicia Films. Sales: Luxbox

“Blondi,” (Dolores Fonzi)

From La Unión de los Ríos, behind “Argentina, 1985”), the awaited directorial debut of Fonzi, star of Santiago Mitre’s Cannes winner “Paulina,” a double mother-son coming of age dramedy. Sales: Film Factory

“A Bright Sun,” (Monica Cambra, Ariadna Fortuny)

Facing the end of the world, Mila, 11, tries to keep her family together by celebrating a party.

Spanish filmmaker Félix Viscarret, known for tackling such heavy subject matter as the Basque conflict (“Patria”), crime in the Cuban capital Havana (“Four Seasons in Havana: Winds of Lent”) and psychological drama (“Staring at Strangers”), has made perhaps his most personal film yet with a touching and engrossing story of fatherhood and the pitfalls of success.

In “Not Such an Easy Life,” 40-year-old Isaías (Miki Esparbé), a once promising young architect, is struggling to balance career and family, wanting to raise his young children while desperate to achieve the fleeting professional success he once enjoyed as he strives against more ambitious rivals.

For Viscarret, Isaías’ challenges very much reflect his own experiences, which resulted in “Not Such an Easy Life.”

“Perhaps it was a cluster of special situations that I began to live with as a parent,” he tells Variety.

“For example, one day I saw all my childless friends leave for a premiere party,...

The festival opens on March 10 and will include super-sized industry progrramme Mafiz.

The 26th edition of the Malaga Film Festival kicks off today, giving the Spanish and international industry the chance to discover the latest films and talent emerging from the local and Latin America landscapes.

Twenty films will screen in the main competition. They include new films from returning Malaga filmmaker Elena Trapé, who won the best film and best director award in 2018 for The Distances. She’s in competition with a drama called The Enchanced, starring Laia Costa, about a young mother who has recently separated and is missing her young daughter.

Major deals close for Latin American and Spanish content at EFM.

In one of the largest deals done at the European Film Market (EFM) this year for Spanish and Latin American fare, Madrid-based Latido Films has closed a raft of deals on Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s rural thrillerThe Beasts, Rocío Mesa’s magical-realist tale Tobacco Barns and Gustavo Hernández’s zombie horror Virus 32.

A big winner at the Goyas earlier this month and a box-office hit in Spain and France, The Beasts has been licensed to Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), while Hernán Jabes’ erotic crime thriller Jezabel has gone to Italy, and...

It is huge deal for Latin American and Spanish content at the EFM.

In one of the largest deals done at the European Film Market (EFM) this year for Spanish and Latin American fare, Madrid-based Latido Films has closed a raft of deals on Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s rural thrillerThe Beasts, Rocío Mesa’s magical-realist tale Tobacco Barns and Gustavo Hernández’s zombie horror Virus 32.

A big winner at the Goyas earlier this month and a box-office hit in Spain and France, The Beasts has been licensed to Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), Hernández’s zombie horror Virus 32 has been sold...

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s ’The Beasts’ has 17 nominations.

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts leads the nominees for Spain’s prestigious Goya awards, with 17, followed closely by Alberto Rodríguez’s Prison 77 on 16.

The Beasts, which had its world premiere at Cannes, centres around a French couple who cause tensions in the local village to which they move. The psychological thriller is nominated in all major categories including best film where it lines up with Prison 77, Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s Lullaby, Pilar Palomero’s La Maternal and Carla Simón’s Golden Bear winner Alcarràs.

Scroll down for the full nominations

Alcarràs is...

“Return to Dust,” the latest work from Chinese director Li Ruin won the top Golden Spike at the Seminci Valladolid Film Festival, Spain’s traditional arthouse platform, which this last week sold over 100,000 tickets for the second time in a row, a sign of much needed, if temporary, vitality in Spain’s desperately sagging art pic market.

“An absorbing, beautifully framed drama that makes a virtue — possibly too much a virtue — of simplicity,” stated Variety’s Jessica Kiang in her Berlinale review, “Dust” is set in a decimated Chinese village, where a downtrodden couple in an arranged marriage forge an unexpected bond as they eke out a living from the land. “Return to Dust” was released in China in September.

“Eo” director Jerzy Skolimowski (“11 Minutes”) earned the best director prize for “a damning polemic on our relationship to other intelligent species — as free labor, food and companions — as seen through the dewy,...

Suggesting an appreciable recovery in the dynamism of international film markets, Madrid-based Latido Films has unveiled a raft of deals on its Cannes line-up, led by standout sales for Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s Cannes Premiere player “The Beasts.”

The Spain-set rural thriller was acquired by Movies Inspired in Italy and Imagine in Benelux.

Co-produced by Spain’s Arcadia Motion Pictures and Sorogoyen’s Caballo Films with France’s Le Pacte, “The Beasts” has also been taken by Kino Mediteran in former Yugoslavia territories and Transilvania Film in Romania.

Meanwhile, fruit of Latido’s strengthening of its remake rights sales strategies, the company has optioned Mexican movie adaptation rights on Nicolás Postiglione’s drama “Immersion” to Paloma Negra Films and Whisky, as a French redo of Gastón Duprat’s Spanish-Argentine drama “Masterpiece” is moving into production.

Also, Latido is in advanced negotiations on further remake rights deals in France, Italy and Mexico,...

“El agua,” (Elena López Riera)

A Directors’ Fortnight title, the feature debut of Locarno winning López Riera (“Los Que Desean”), a fantasy-laced village-set critique of gender violence. S.A. Elle Driver

“Alcarràs,” (Carla Simón)

The 2022 Berlin Golden Bear winner, Simón’s follow-up to “Summer 1993” and the flagship title for Catalonia and Spain’s newest filmmaking generation. S.A. MK2 Films

“Amazing Elisa,” (Sádrac González-Perellón)

The next from 2017 BiFan Grand Jury Prize winner González-Perellón (“Black Hollow Cage”), once more mixing fantasy and family dynamics as Elisa, 12, plans revenge after her mother’s tragic death. S.A. Filmax

“The Beasts,” (Rodrigo Sorogoyen)

One of 2022’s most awaited Spanish titles, playing Cannes Premiere, a Galicia-set thriller from Oscar-nominee Sorogoyen (“Mother”), produced by Arcadia, Caballo Films and Le Pacte. S.A. Latido Films

“The Communion Girl,” (Víctor García)

A revenge thriller involving an urban legend about a girl in a communion dress. S.

Spain’s David Galán Galindo, helmer of Netflix movie “Unknown Origins,” is attached to direct comedy series project “Todo mal” (“Ok Boomer”), created by TV entertainment writers Fernando Erre and Manuel Martínez March.

Thesp Alberto San Juan, a double Goya Award winner — for best supporting actor on Cesc Gay’s “Sentimental” and lead actor for Félix Viscarret’s “Bajo las estrellas” – is in talks to topline the series.

“Ok Boomer” features among six TV drama projects developed at Spain’s General Society of Spanish Authors’ Foundation that are being pitched during Conecta Fiction 5, the international TV industry event that takes place over Sept. 13-17 in Navarre’s Pamplona, northern Spain.

The project creators, whose credits take in primetime TV shows such as Tve’s “Y si sí?” and Etb’s Basque flagship series “Vaya Semanita,” aim to find at Conecta Fiction a production and/or a TV window partnership.

Structured at eight half hours,...

The Juan José Millás novel is being turned into a psychological thriller by the Spanish filmmaker; the cast includes Leonor Watling, Paco León and Álex Brendemühl. The director behind half of the episodes of the series Patria (read the review), Félix Viscarret, currently finds himself in his home town of Pamplona, engrossed (as he has been for the last few weeks) in making the film From the Shadows, a big-screen adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Juan José Millás. Leonor Watling, Paco León, Álex Brendemühl, Juan Diego Botto, María Romanillos, Marcos Ruiz and Susana Abaitua will topline the feature. With a screenplay penned by the director together with David Muñoz (La estrategia del pequinés), the film revolves around Damián, who, in order to run away from his boss when he fires him after many long years of service in his company, hides in an...

France’s Warner TV has acquired NBC’s drama Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist from Lionsgate. Starring Jane Levy, the show will premiere in France on May 19 after launching in the U.S. earlier this year. It was created by Austin Winsberg and centers on a San Francisco coder who starts to hear other people’s thoughts through popular songs. “This new Lionsgate property is a truly innovative idea brought by a world-class creative team. Musically adventurous, heartfelt and intriguing, the show has everything to entertain Warner TV fans,” said Julien Borde, head of kids and general entertainment channels at WarnerMedia France and Africa. Channel 4 has previously picked up Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist in the UK.

HBO Europe’s first Spanish original drama Patria is to debut in the U.S. and 61 countries across Europe and Latin America on May 17. Set in Spanish Basque Country and taking place over thirty...

San Sebastian — Since the 1950s, Spain has been a favorite European shooting locale. One of the biggest reasons remains its easily accessible, unique and diverse locations.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this past June, the Navarre Film Commission kicked off a traveling exhibition which has been touring Spain over the summer and will present in San Sebastian during this year’s festival.

A tribute to the diversity of locations that exist in Navarra – including castles, deserts, mountains and lush temperate forests – the exhibition shines a spotlight on 18 such locations used by international and domestic film and TV shoots over the past few decades, as well as the productions themselves.

With medieval castles and fortifications a-plenty, Navarre has long been a favorite for historical and fantasy shoots. The most recently recognizable and widely seen, the Bardenas canyon badlands, played host to the Dothraki hordes and their Khalisi in “Game of Thrones.” Artajona...

Spain’s big shoot business is rocking, galvanized by more regional options and incentives that are highly competitive — at least in rates.

With a long tradition of hosting international productions, Spain earned larger global visibility after “Game of Thrones” filmed there from 2014 to 2018.

Production services has become one of the healthiest audiovisual sectors in Spain, driven by a golden age of local and international TV drama, as well as greater legal stability of its incentives. Spain’s mainland offers 20% tax rebates for international productions, capped at €3 million ($3.4 million); in the Canary Islands, the rate is 40%, with a €5.4 million ($6.1 million) ceiling.

“Tax advantages are attracting all kind of international productions,” says Nostromo’s Adrián Guerra, president of producers’ association Profilm.

“There are so many productions going on all over Spain that it’s becoming difficult to crew up on new productions,” he adds.

Challenges remain. The tax system is predominantly luring low-to-mid-range foreign projects.

Project will be produced by Miss Wasabi Films.

Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet is set to write and direct her first TV series with Foodie Love, a HBO Europe production.

The eight-part half-hour series will be produced by Miss Wasabi Films and will shoot this year.

The protagonists of the series will be connected by a mobile app that finds couples among foodie lovers. Two thirty-somethings embark on getting to know each other - over several dates they’ll have to discover if their common devotion to Japanese yuzu or shared distaste for foodie pretension are enough to build the foundations of a lasting love story.

Winter is coming to Portugal. In a bid to further expand its footprint in Europe, Time Warner has launched its premium content streaming service HBO in Portugal. Acclaimed HBO original shows led by “Game of Thrones,” “Big Little Lies,” “Westworld” and “True Detective” will be available in Portugal starting Feb. 11.

HBO Portugal went live Monday as a Svod platform providing premium content directly to consumers via their smartphones, tablets and other devices including PC, PlayStation 4, Android TV, Chromecast and Apple TV.

In addition, Vodafone Portugal serves as the exclusive operator partner for local distribution, allowing Vodafone Portugal customers access to the streaming service via TV Vodafone or on their smartphones, computers and other devices.

HBO Europe’s programming offer encompasses five services covering twenty-one countries, including Spain as well as Scandinavian, Baltic, and Central European territories.

HBO Portugal offers more than 4,500 episodes of HBO original content, including every season of...

HBO’s first Spanish-language original production will shoot next year

Pablo Trapero, the award-winning Argentinian director of The Clan will be the lead director on Patria, the first Spanish-language original series to be produced by HBO Europe, which is set to shoot in early 2019. Félix Viscarret, the Spanish director whose credits include Dreamers in 1999 and Under The Stars in 2007, will also direct some episodes.

HBO Europe has greenlit the eight-part adaptation of Fernando Aramburu’s bestselling novel about two families living through the tumultuous years of the separtist terrorism of Eta in Spanish Basque Country. The adaptation has been written...

HBO Europe has greenlit “Patria,” its first original series out of Spain, to be written and produced by Aitor Gabilondo (“El Príncipe”) and directed by award-winning helmers Pablo Trapero and Félix Viscarret (“Under the Stars”).

The eight-part series adapts author Fernando Aramburu’s 2016 novel of the same name, one of the most acclaimed of recent Spanish bestsellers. Variety reported on the development of the project last year.

Trapero, a leading light of New Argentine Cinema who won a best director plaudit in Venice for “The Clan” in 2016, will serve as lead director. Trapero has made movies that deal with weighty social and political issues but appeal far beyond art-house audiences, such as Cannes competition contender “Lion’s Den” and Ricardo Darin-starrer “Carancho.” Viscarret, a Goya award winner who helmed the Caribbean noir series “Four Seasons in Havana” for Tornasol, will direct some of “Patria’s” episodes.

The 646-page novel looks...

Independent cinema champion extends activities into television

Wild Bunch is extending its activities into the co-production and distribution of TV series with the creation of Wild Bunch TV, overseen by the company’s head of international sales, Carole Baraton.

“Wild Bunch TV will initiate international TV series from all around the world, provide coproduction and financing services, and, finally, distribute and commercialize them worldwide,” the company said in a statement.

The firm has pulled together a team of professionals experienced in the TV entertainment business, comprising Diana Bartha (development and international distribution), Thomas Triboit (acquisitions) and Aurélia Porret (marketing).

Veteran international fiction producer Georges Campana is also on board as an advisor.

Paris-based Wild Bunch, which has been pulling together the new TV division since before Cannes, will make its debut outing at Mipcom with two initial acquisitions Medici: Masters of Florence and Four Seasons in Havana.

Medici: Masters of Florence is the latest project from prolific...

MADRID -- Felix Viscarret's family drama Bajo las Estrellas walked away with the top honor at the 10th Malaga Spanish Film Festival on Saturday, winning the 60,000-euro Golden Biznaga.

The film also earned Viscarret the director's award and Alberto San Juan the actor prize for his part as a man who travels home for his father's funeral and becomes entangled in his brother's fiancee's life.

Rodrigo Cortes' much-acclaimed black comedy Concursante took the Critics Award, while Jaime Marques' Ladrones won the 15,000-euro Special Jury Award.

Pudor lead Elvira Minguez won the actress honors, with Veronica Echegui winning the best supporting actress award for El Menor de los Males.

The festival, which hosted 105,620 visitors, saw ticket sales grow 21% from the previous year. The festival is also the framework for the Malaga Screenings. The screenings, which ran March 15-17, grew to 171 buyers from last year's 142 from 30 countries.