News

Madrid — Mexico’s Manolo Caro, creator-director-writer of Netflix hit “La Casa de las Flores” (“The House of Flowers”), will preside the jury of the first Iberseries, one of the Spanish-speaking world’s first TV festivals to be clearly staged not only for local audiences but the whole of Ibero-America.

Focusing on Spanish-language drama series and promoted by Spain’s Secuoya Foundation, the inaugural edition of Iberseries will take place over May 25-30 in Granada, Southern Spain.

Backed by top TV networks and Svod platforms across Spain, Latin and North America – Netflix, HBO, Movistar Plus, Atresmedia, Disney España and Azteca TV figure among operators that have already confirmed their support, according to the festival organization – Iberseries will present new details of its first edition at a presentation at next week’s Natpe market in Miami on Tuesday Jan. 21.

A symbol of and driving force in the new Spanish-language content scene, Caro...

The first edition of Iberseries, a new international Spanish-language TV series festival, will take place May 25-30 in Granada, Southern Spain.

Promoted by the Secuoya Foundation, the event is backed by top TV networks and Svod platforms across Spain, Latin and North America.

Netflix, HBO, Movistar Plus, Atresmedia, Disney España and Azteca TV figure among the operators that have already confirmed their support, the organization said.

The festival will be open to TV fiction, documentary and animation contents.

Iberseries will give 12 awards, taking in dramatic series, comedy series, youth series, miniseries, screenplay, dramatic actress and actor, comedy actress and actor, and a honorary prize for career achievement.

“Our goal is to promote the festival idea, which is neither of institutions nor of private companies. We aim to give visibility and connect people, countries and stories,” said Secuoya Foundation president Raúl Berdonés at a press conference in Madrid last week.

“Today we can boast that Spain,...

Epigmenio Ibarra proudly shows off the impressive new facilities of his 27-year-old production house, Argos Comunicación, located in an industrial zone outside Mexico City. He walks through one of six brand-new sound stages, a state-of-the-art suite where colorists are working on a series, a set-construction warehouse and more. A production has wrapped the day before, another will start the following week, and still another in two weeks.

Construction of the facilities was completed less than two years ago, just in time for the extraordinary explosion of the Mexican entertainment industry that followed the arrival of global companies like Netflix and Amazon. Not that Ibarra had an inkling of what was coming. As recently as five years ago, he says, the local television landscape was still dominated by Televisa and TV Azteca, and perhaps only five series were being produced in all of Mexico.

Today, Ibarra puts that number at 50. Many...

Buenos Aires — Launching their new production house, La Corriente de Golfo, last April, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna have tapped Mexican writer-director Kyzza Terrazas as the company’s head of development.

The appointment will certainly help build the company appointing an old-rounder capable of overseeing and implementing development, writing and directing, and a longtime friend of manny of the leading lights of a new creative generation of Mexican directors which has made its marks in cinema but is often now diversifying into TV.

It also builds on past relationships: a longtime friend and work colleague of both García Bernal and Luna, Terrazas co-wrote García Bernal’s feature debut “Deficit,” headed up development at Canana, the company Garcia Bernal and Luna created with Pablo Cruz from 2005. Terrazas ankled Canana in 2009 to make his feature debut, “Machete Language,” produced by Mexico City shingle Mr. Woo and exec-produced by García Bernal and Diego Luna.

Cancun, Mexico — It’s boom time for drama series production in Mexico, Spain and Brazil, driven by pay TV and Ott players and their competitors alike. As a co-production forum, the 5th MipCancun moved up a gear. This year saw its biggest attendance, plus strategic alliances, hints at or presentations of multiple new series announcements of huge ambitions – Televisa’s 20-title remake extravaganza Fábrica de sueños; Secouya’s plan for a Madrid Content City. 14 takes on the new Spanish-language series gold rush:

1.Spanish-language Series Production Booms

MipCancun rocked. But it did so as a production forum, not a classic sales market. The production driver? The ever more fully-fledged Ott platform financing phenomenon. “It started focused much more on global content. But we’ve seen a second wave now of these same players – Netflix, Amazon, moving into more local content, in Latin America, India, Korea, even in the Middle East,” Creative Artists...

Cancun, Mexico — Raul Berdones, president of Spain’s Grupo Secuoya, Netflix’s exclusive production services partner at its European Production Hub in Madrid, plans to create a Madrid Content City.

The plan would build – literally – on Grupo Secuoya’s 22,000 square-meter Ciudad de la Tele, the site of Netflix’s European Production Hub, but expand to a final 140,000 square meters, Berdones announced Wednesday on the first day of MipCancun.

Secouya hopes to have Madrid Content City up-and-running by the second semester of 2020, with 15 sound-stages in operation, plus multiple backup facilities.

La Ciudad de la Tele currently has three soundstages and two more on the way. The ultimate gameplan would be to create “Europe’s Silicon Valley” and biggest production center, attracting both national film-tv players and international pay TV and global Svod players, Berdones added.

To be announced in far fuller detail in upcoming months, the plans look highly ambitious. They do play,...

The new version of “24” is running right now on Fox, but for a more intriguing take on the classic government conspiracy angle, it’s worth checking out “Ingobernable,” Netflix’s new political drama featuring Kate del Castillo.

As Emilia Urquiza, the First Lady of Mexico, del Castillo has to go on the run (literally, and in heels) following a series of dramatic events that make for a pulse-pounding pilot.

“This is a badass woman who’s fighting for the right things — even though she’s willing to do the wrong thing to do the right thing,” del Castillo told IndieWire about her character. Initially an established telenovela actress, del Castillo has branched out into film as well as English language television like “Weeds” and “Jane the Virgin” — in part because she was excited to expand her range beyond the type of characters she was asked to play.

Read More: ‘Ingobernable...

Mexico City, Oct 9 (Ians/Efe) Television should bear witness to current events with fiction series being a 'mirror of reality and not a hole in which to hide from it', said Mexican producer Epigmenio Ibarra.

He believes that in the Mexican market reality and small-screen productions have always been at two opposite and contradictory ends of existence.

'What happened is that Mexican television started off with its back to the country and on bended knee to power, so a story portraying the true aspects of power was obviously a mortal sin,' Ibarra told Efe Friday.

However, 'there is no serious TV channel in the world.

Mexico City -- Paramount Pictures Mexico has picked up Mexican distribution rights to Carlos Carrera's thriller "Backyard -- El Traspatio," marking Paramount's first acquisition here since it replaced United International Pictures Mexico last year.

The Indigo Films production, which centers on a homicide investigation in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, features Ana de la Reguera, Joaquin Cosio, Sayed Badreya and Jimmy Smits.

Acclaimed Mexican scribe Sabina Berman penned the script for Carrera, who directed Mexico's all-time boxoffice leader, "The Crime of Father Amaro." Berman also is producing "Backyard" with Epigmenio Ibarra of Argos and Isabelle Tardan.

Production wrapped last week and Paramount is looking to release the picture nationwide early next year.

MEXICO CITY -- Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo and Mexican producer Argos are closing in on a three-year deal under which Argos will make at least six novelas for the U.S. network. In a recent telephone interview, Argos producer Epigmenio Ibarra said the two companies will make the announcement within several weeks when Telemundo president and CEO Jim McNamara visits Mexico. "We think the deal is very important," Ibarra said. "Telemundo is going to reopen a production line in Mexico."...

Opens

Friday, July 25

In "Lucia, Lucia", a man's disappearance leads his wife into a midlife crisis and all kinds of intrigue involving gangsters, crooked cops, an aging political lefty and a 25-year-old cutie hot to slip into her bed. While midlife-crisis movies can't help covering the same territory more or less, by mixing in such shady and fascinating characters, this Mexican comedy gives the genre a real kick in the pants. Featuring Goya Award-winning actress Cecilia Roth, star of five of Pedro Almodovar's films, "Lucia, Lucia" (known as "La Hija Del Canibal" or "The Cannibal's Daughter" in its native land) did extremely well in Mexico earlier this year and should perform admirably in art house venues for Fox Searchlight. The film plays Saturday in the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival.

Roth plays Lucia, a writer of children's stories who might as well be a widow for all she gets out of her marriage to a dull bank officer. She doesn't quite realize the extent of her dissatisfaction and loneliness until he mysteriously vanishes moments before the couple is to board a plane for a holiday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Tears are shed, the police informed, then Lucia can do little more than sit miserably in their flat. A knock at the door brings a consoling 70-year-old neighbor, Felix (Carlos Alovarez-Novoa), she has never spoken to before. A while later, another neighbor, a good-looking youth named Adrian (Kuno Becker), comes to her rescue when two thugs try to mug her. Adrian, young enough to be Lucia's son, makes no secret of his attraction to her.

The relationship among this trio forms the core of the movie, in which Lucia gradually emerges from her shell to reclaim her life. Meanwhile, all three become embroiled in a plot worthy of a Dashiel Hammett novel. A political group claims to have kidnapped Lucia's husband and demands a huge ransom. She insists she has no money. A note from her husband directs her to their bank safety deposit, where she finds stacks of cash. Where did that come from? Clearly, things were going on around Lucia she knew nothing about.

Antonio Serrano, who directs and adapts Rosa Montero's novel to the screen, takes a light approach, letting suspense and action unfold naturally yet often kidding these genre conventions at the same time. Then there is another element to this tall tale: Lucia makes an unreliable narrator. A writer who tends to believe her own fiction, she occasionally stops the movie to admit she has "lied" about a fact or development. We can't always be certain whether some part of this story may be taking place in her vivid imagination.

For a talented actress like Roth, Lucia is a dream role, where she gets to play histrionics, romance, adventure and the trauma of self-discovery. Lucia's two companions in crime-solving are both idealists. Felix, a leftist who fought against Franco in Spain in the '30s, refuses to accept corruption in any form. And Adrian refuses to see Lucia as she herself does but rather as a vibrant, passionate woman. His pursuit of her makes her gradually convinced he may be right.

"Lucia, Lucia" never takes itself too seriously. The movie wants to get from A to B by taking the most interesting and colorful route possible. At times, the movie sags from too much plot, but the characters remain buoyant and funny right to the very end.

LUCIA, LUCIA

Fox Searchlight

Titan Prods. and Argon Communications in association with Lola Films

Credits:

Writer-director: Antonio Serrano

Based on the novel by: Rosa Montero

Producers: Epigmenio Ibarra, Carlos Payan, Christian Valdelievre, Inna Payan, Matthias Ehrenberg

Director of photography: Xavier Perez Grobet

Art director: Brigitte Broch

Music: Nacho Mastretta

Co-producer: Andres Vicente Gomez

Editor: Jorge Garcia

Cast:

Lucia: Cecilia Roth

Adrian: Kuno Becker

Felix: Carlos Alvarez-Novoa

Running time -- 110 minutes

MPAA rating: R...