World Film Report Spain: Iglesia’s Balada Triste de Trompeta and Carlos Iglesias’ Ispansi

Spain Film Scene: Local

Alex de la Iglesia’s (“The Oxford Murders“, “Day of the Beast“) latest film “Balada Triste de Trompeta” finished principal photography this month (see pic of director above). This co-production with France’s production company La fabrique 2, tells the story of two heavily scarred clowns, Javier and Sergio, that bloodily compete for the love of Natalia, the trapezist.

Set in 1973, during the last days of the dictatorship of Franco, the director himself describes the film as a “grotesque tragedy of comedic horror.” The film stars T.V comedian Carlos Areces, fresh from the success of its first film “Spanish Movie” and Antonio de la Torre, the critically acclaimed actor of Daniel Sánchez Arévalo’s “Gordos“, also starring are Sancho Gracia, Santiago Segura and Terele Pávez, all veterans from de la Iglesia’s previous films. The film is set to be released at the end of 2010.

After his hit debut “1 franco, 14 pesetas” director Carlos Iglesias returns to portrait the story of Spanish emigrants during civil war in “Ispansi“. The film, currently shooting, it´s based on a true story that retells the epic journey of the over 3000 small children that were sent to the Soviet Union by the republic during the beginning of the civil war, Paula, a single mother coming from a rich family, fakes to be republican so she can send her son out of the country and travel alongside with him as a volunteer caretaker.

Iglesias, who also co-stars and produce, declared that he is trying to pay homage with this film to the epic Russian of the post-war era by recreating the Russian Neo-expressionism used at the time in cinema. The film is a co-production between Spain and Swiss.

Newcomer Kike Maillo shoots for Spanish production company Escándalo Films, a sci-fi drama titled Eva which tells the story of Eva, a 10 year-old little girl that suffers from amnesia after her mother perishes in a terrible accident. Alex, a talented robotic engineer will try to help her cope with her trauma by investigating robots that are capable to relate with humans. Daniel Brühl (Inglorious Basterds), Alberto Ammann and Marta Etura (who both starred in the box office hit and winner of 8 Spanish Academy awards “Celda 211“) and Claudia Vega star, the script counts with the collaboration of Spanish prestigious playwright Sergi Belbel.

The thirteenth edition of the Málaga Film Festival took place this past April between the 16th to the 24th – the fest is one of the most important events here in Spain since it focuses exclusively on films that are Spanish based productions. There wasn’t high expectations for this year’s edition since there wasn’t really any highly anticipated titles besides the presentation out of completion of the latest films by Carlos Saura who opened the festival with his “Io, Don Giovanni”, which at the end gathered more attention by the press due to its production troubles than by its artistic qualities and Julio Medem’s “Room in Rome” that got mixed reviews although everyone seems to agree it is a big improvement from “Caótica Ana”, his past film.

Going against all predictions some nice surprises showed up. “Héroes” by Pau Freixas, a nostalgic dramedy set in the 80’s quickly became the favorite film of the festival but ended up only with the audience award and a minor prize for its costume design. The movie starred Alex Brendemühl who took home the award for Best Supporting Actor for another movie “Rabia”, (see trailer) one of the other pleasant surprises of the festival and one of the most awarded, including the Golden Biznaga Award for Best Picture. The film, directed by Sebastián Cordero and produced by Guillermo del Toro, teaming up again after their first successful collaboration with “Crónicas”, it’s a romantic thriller about a construction worker in hiding for killing his foreman who hides in the mansion where his girlfriend works as a maid. The other most awarded film of the festival, and who gathered excellent reactions from both audience and critics, is “Bon Appétit” from newcomer David Pinillos and co-produced with Germany and Italy. The film (see trailer) won the jury award and awards for Best Actor, Screenplay and a Special Mention for actress Nora Tschirner.

Finally the award for best director went to Juana Macías for “Planes para Mañana” a “Short Cuts” type of movie where three different stories taking place in one single day end up intertwining.

Spain Film Scene: International

In Cannes related news we know that producer Luis Miñarro co-produces the new film by Thai helmer Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives sees the titular character recall six of his past lives while on his deathbed. For Miñarro the reason his production company Eddie Saeta got involved in this project alongside other countries such as France, Germany and England is because the director is considered to be a cult filmmaker and the project is deemed as the ideal film to introduce the filmmaker to Spanish audiences.

Other inclusions obviously include Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger – which is financed by MediaPro, the Argentina-French and Spanish co-production of Diego Lerman’s latest documentary The Invisible Eye was included as part of the Director’s Fortnight section as is the case for the Moroccan-Spain production Todos vós sodes capitáns from Oliver Laxe.

Spanish director Víctor Erice will be part of the jury of the official section at this year´s Cannes Film Festival. Erice is the helmer of “El Espíritu De La Colmena”, “El Sur” and “El Sol del Membrillo” which won the jury´s and Fipresci´s prices, besides being nominated for the golden palm, at Cannes in 1992.

Mario Balarezo del Caz has written for several web-based film sites. He is a freelance film reporter and film critic based out of Madrid.