Spanish filmmaker Àlex Lora (winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize for his 2024 short) has completed production on his sophomore feature film. The folks at Cineuropa report that L’escletxa (aka The Fissure) (which was shot in Barcelona this past fall) is now in post production. The cast includes Anna Alarcón, Mourad Ouani, newcomers Younes Tisghiti, Walid Zaghdoud and Maia Vila, with Alex Brendemühl shoring up in a smaller capacity. Locarno, Venice, Toronto and San Sebastián are all legit film fests that could nab the world premiere. Lora already has his third feature in the works in Blue-Smurf Ice Cream which could move into production as early as this year. This latest film might be a sensitive, possibly explosive look back the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on August 17th 2017. Lora’s cinema has included themes of immigration systems, ethical grey matter. Inicia Films’ Valérie Delpierre and Scope Pictures’ Geneviève Lemal produced the film. Here are some production stills and synopsis below:
Set in a small town in northern Catalonia, The Fissure follows Pol Khaled, a teenage boy raised by his Catalan mother after his Moroccan father’s disappearance. Drifting between friends, family, and institutions that see him as a problem to be managed, Pol moves through the summer with quiet anger. A violent incident in a nightclub becomes a point of no return, forcing Pol to confront the consequences of his actions. As he tries to rebuild his life, Pol uncovers traces of his absent father and an inherited identity he never knew he carried. As tensions rise within the town, he is forced to confront the distance between belief, violence, loss, and responsibility.
