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Co-director Jérôme Paillard says market ”exceeded our expectations, especially regarding the quality of the projects proposed in the different sections”.

Horror When Evil Lurks, drama León – both from Argentina – and fantasy drama Almamula, a co-production between Argentina, Italy and France, were among the winners as Ventana Sur came to a close on Friday in Buenos Aires.

The prizes come with development and/or completion funds, or attendance at partner events, underscoring Ventana Sur’s reputation as a critical support platform for Latin American content.

Demian Rugna’s Blood Window Screenings Award winner When Evil Lurks, the first Spanish-language production for...

Continuing its energetic push into international markets via its Spanish Screenings initiative, Spain’s film and export authorities look set to back a record presence of execs and movie/TV titles at Buenos Aires’ Ventana Sur, Latin America’s biggest film-tv market.

Co-organized by Cannes Marché du Film, Cannes Film Festival and Argentina’s Incaa film-tv agency, Ventana Sur runs Nov. 28–Dec.2.

Announced Sunday at a San Sebastian press conference, Spanish Screenings on Tour will see five projects or productions-in-post from Spain play at each of four key Ventana Sur forums. These take in animation platform Animation! where five titles will be presented as part of a Spanish Screenings Anímate initiative, its genre market Blood Window (Spanish Screamings), women directors’ project section Punto de Género (Spanish Screenings Perspectives) and TV focus SoloSerieS (Spanish Screenings Series), said Beatriz Navas, director general of Spain’s Icaa film-tv agency.

Projects or productions in...

Since 2018, Spain’s film and TV industries has gone through a revolution. Accustomed to the success of standout movie auteurs – Almodóvar, Amenabar and Trueba – for two decades or more Spain has blown U.S. shows out of its domestic free-to-air primetime and been one of the world’s most successful exporter of fiction TV formats.

Now, Spain’s place on the periphery of global TV business is history. Through October, four Netflix Spanish shows or movies – “Money Heist”, “The Platform,” (56 million), “Below Zero” (47 million) and “Elite” – were some of the most watched non-English language Netflix titles of all time.

Spain’s Canary Islands boasts one of the highest shoot incentives – 50% of a first €1 million ($1.1 million) spend – anywhere in the world.

Capping that, in March 2021 Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the most ambitious film-tv incentive drive in history: the Spain Avs Hub Plan, worth a total €1.6 billion ($1.81 billion) in investment or state engineered financing.

In Jorge Luis Borges’s story “The South” the narrator notes that “every Argentine knows that the South begins at the other side of Rivadavia.” And this is where I found myself last month, in a city called Mar Del Plata, for the 27th Mar Del Plata Film Festival, hundreds of miles south of Buenos Aires, where I had been invited by Pablo Conde to attend the book launch of a Spanish translation of The Blue Velvet Project, which originally appeared here at Filmmaker from August 2011 to August 2012. Where I was, among generous, film-loving people, everything hovered on the …...