FILMS from AFAR

Gripping and unexpected, this film blends brutality and tenderness into a two hour-plus musical saga that's impossible to turn away from. Emilia Pérez tackles Mexican corruption and narco-related violence in a wholly unique package. The goriest of images give way to gentle ballads and lullabies. Mexico's mass graves of tens of thousands of murdered or disappeared citizens contrast with the delicate tale of Emilia's gender dysphoria and transformation (Gascón, stunning in dual roles as the dangerous Manitas and the likeable Emilia). That a film can evoke sympathy in its viewers for a violent mafioso is a testament to its power of persuasion, an intention underscored in closing scenes involving a saint-like statue. While Gomez may give the most memorable musical performances, this film's heart belongs to Saldaña, whose steely Rita journeys alongside Emilia, turning from hostage to friend. Saldaña's singing is forgettable, but her ability to convey complex emotions in a single look–and her dance moves–are not. Many of the set pieces contain striking choreography and haunting tunes, with lyrics sometimes whispered or spoken. French director Audiard 's first foray in Spanish, the melodrama could be reminiscent of the work of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar . Read the full review at Common Sense Media Images courtesy of Netflix.

A well-paced but overly lengthy documentary about a fascinating woman, this film does what you hope it will by offering new information about a very public figure. Martha director Cutler has included dozens of audio interviews to complement the on-camera interview with the woman herself. Martha has also provided what's billed as "never-before-seen photos, letters, and diary entries." There are insights into her childhood, what drives her, how she feels about her perfectionism and her romantic relationships, how she experienced her months in prison. But the film runs long, and some of the same images are shown again and again. You can't help but wonder how the self-proclaimed perfectionist might have edited this film differently, were she given the chance. Read the full review at Common Sense Media Images courtesy of Netflix

It takes a while, but this family dramedy with endearing characters finds its rhythm midway through the story and builds to a fairly predictable but enormously gratifying ending. The pace of the first act of  Nutcrackers  feels slightly off. Scenarios meant to be funny feel overly scripted or awkwardly staged to elicit an easy laugh. There's the occasional unnecessary use of slow mo, and who paddleboards across a lake to find cell phone bars when they could easily take a car into town? Characters are set up as more locked into archetypes than they turn out to be: the big-city businessman versus the crazy homeschooled kids (played by four real-life brothers). In act two, when they're getting to know each other, more genuine moments unfold. Details about the family's background emerge, adding complexity. The parents' experience in a cult explains the children's homeschooling (in which little to no actual schooling takes place, but at least nobody is brainwashing them). The sibling relationship between Michael and Jan comes into focus, as does Michael's lonely, work-obsessed lifestyle–no friends to even water his plant while he's away. The emotional closing sequence, deftly filmed and set to inspiring music, ties all these pieces together. Justice heartbreakingly asks, once again, "When I wake up tomorrow, are you still gonna be here?" And Michael literally awakens to his future. Read the full review online at Common Sense Media Images courtesy of Hulu

Even the most respected literary works don't always translate well to screen, and this is an example of a very challenging adaptation. Magic realism in particular can be quite evocative on page but confusing on screen, seen in Pedro Páramo 's narrative time switches, ambiguous dialogues, and elements of fantasy. The film's cast and visual team have done an inspiring job conveying the darkness, fear, and superstitions of the times, and the dread of confronting the worst of human nature. It may be that this film will speak strongly to a local audience familiar with the original work and its deeper significance within Mexican culture. For other viewers, it could present a demanding – and lengthy, at two-plus hours – watch. Read the full review at Common Sense Media . Images courtesy of Netflix

Work-life balance may be a multimillion-dollar industry, but it's not a new concept. Experts say it's also achievable. Read the full article below.

If you paid attention at the time of the controversy around the "kiss" mentioned in the title of this film, you'll appreciate this play-by-play of the events surrounding it. It's All Over: The Kiss That Changed Spanish Football could have been titled "The Kiss that Changed Spain" because of the event's broader social ramifications. It was Spain's #MeToo reckoning, as at least one headline called it. "The kiss of death for Spanish machismo," another declared. Yet even so, this 95-minute documentary might appeal most to soccer fans. This is a settling of accounts, with the film standing squarely behind the women athletes and telling their side of the story. But they also talk about much more than just the controversial kiss. Multiple female athletes, past and present, recount years of indignities the Spanish national women's soccer team lived for the better part of a decade, leading up to the 2023 World Cup, from no changing rooms or gym access to arriving jet-lagged to matches. The film serves as a companion piece to LFG , a 2021 documentary detailing how the US Women's National Soccer Team commanded equal pay. The closing scenes offer a rousing reminder of how social change impacts subsequent generations, and why strong female role models are essential for young girls. Read the full review at Common Sense Media Images courtesy of Netflix

Recognizing the country’s film industry as a key driver of a potential post-pandemic recovery, the government is setting its sights on rapid growth. In March 2021, after months of industry talks, Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez unveiled a multipronged plan to bolster the country’s audiovisual sector. Four months later, while visiting the U.S., he upped the ante by vowing to convert Spain into the “Hollywood of Europe.” His dreams appear to be — by many measures — coming to fruition. Insiders chalk it up to the new public-private collaboration via what has been dubbed the Spain Audiovisual Hub plan, which treats the industry, finally, as a strategic one that isn’t dependent on subsidies — as critics have long barked — and becomes something that can play an important role in the country’s post-pandemic recovery. “The implementation of the Spanish government’s Spain Audiovisual Hub plan is crucial for the Spanish industry since it arose to meet the historical demand of the sector,” says Elisa Garcia Grande, executive director of ICEX-Invest in Spain, a division of the country’s export and investment board. “For the first time, it concedes the industry’s strategic role within the Spanish economy.” Launched in March 2021 with a public investment of 1.6 billion euros ($1.56 billion) through 2025, the Hub has been working on four key areas: attracting foreign investments and shoots; improving financial and tax instruments; training talent, with a special focus on women; and implementing regulatory reforms and eliminating administrative barriers. The plan’s stated objective is to increase film and TV production in the country by 30 percent by 2025 to solidify Spain as both a production leader and an attractive location for investment, talent and international shoots. Included in these measures is the launch of the Spain Audiovisual Bureau to answer questions and facilitate collaborations. The Hub’s multilingual website is averaging about 50,000 unique monthly visitors since its May launch, according to Garcia Grande. “This government is much more aware of the benefits of the film industry than previous governments,” says Peter Welter Soler, a partner in Spanish production services outfit Fresco Film and current vice president of the national producers association Profilm, a key mediator between the government and the industry. He suggests that the fact the AV industry kept working during the pandemic contributed to the new vision of its strategic advantage in a country traditionally reliant on tourism, real estate and agriculture. The new perspective sees the industry as one “that can bring a lot of benefits, jobs, money and well-being to the society in general,” he says. Read the full article at The Hollywood Reporter . Click the image below for the print version.

Read the full story in The Hollywood Reporter's 2023 Cannes Dailies . Boasting everything from medieval castles to pristine beaches and futuristic architecture, the region has recently played host to an impressively diverse array of projects, including Guy Ritchie's The Covenant , Disney+'s Andor and Amazon's Citadel .

Read the full story in The Hollywood Reporter's 2023 Cannes Dailies .

Read the full report in The Hollywood Reporter's 2023 Cannes Dailies . In 2021, the Spanish government launched a strategic plan to boost its audiovisual sector, and it worked: This year's country of honor in Cannes is thriving like never before.

Orson Welles famously started but never finished an adaptation in Spain of  Don Quixote , Miguel de Cervantes’ beloved 17th-century novel. Terry Gilliam’s first attempt to shoot his take on  Quixote  fell apart so spectacularly in 2000 that it resulted in a widely viewed “unmaking-of” documentary titled, grimly,  Lost in La Mancha .  But they weren’t just tilting at windmills. Gilliam completed  The Man Who Killed Don Quixote  nearly two decades later, making it one of literally dozens of screen adaptations from around the world based on the widely published novel. In April, Oscar-winning director Alejandro Amenábar ( The Sea Inside )will start shooting on  The Captive , an origin tale about a young, storytelling Cervantes in an Algiers prison in 1575. Spanish literature — and its literary figures — have been inspiring filmmakers since the dawn of cinema. According to a now-defunct Cervantes Virtual Library database, considered incomplete by some accounts, in Spain almost 1,200 literary adaptations were produced or co-produced between 1905 and 2013. Today, “the interest in books for possible film adaptations has been increasing year after year,” according to Anna Soler-Pont, founder and director of Barcelona-based Pontas Literary and Film Agency, which has been in the business for more than three decades and represents authors on five continents. Recent successes are fueling competition for source material, particularly in certain genres, while directors and producers say they’re being approached by publishers earlier than ever before. “In the last 10 years, there have been more and more literary adaptations,” affirms director Isabel Coixet, the European Film Academy’s 2023 European Achievement in World Cinema Award winner. “In the last month, I think I’ve been offered five adaptations from different countries,” Coixet says, “and I thought I was never going to do another adaptation!” Coixet’s most recent drama,  Un Amor , was based on the best-selling novel by Sara Mesa, and in 2017 she won a best international literary adaptation prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair (as well as top Goya Awards) for her adaptation of author Penelope Fitzgerald’s  The Bookshop . Researchers in the field see new trends, such as an interest in younger and more diverse authors and formats, including comics, as well as writer-directors adapting their own works, for example from the theater.  Directors find inspiration in all kinds of stories. Pablo Berger, whose graphic novel-inspired animated feature  Robot Dreams  recently won best adapted script and animated feature Goyas and is now nominated for an Oscar, describes discovering American author Sara Varon’s wordless book when his daughter was a toddler learning to read.  Years later, he recalls, “I was having a coffee in my office and procrastinating, and I took out the book and read it again, and again I was fascinated. I thought it was funny, unique, surreal. When I got to the end, I was completely, deeply moved.” In that moment, he says, he envisioned the film he would make. Read the full article at The Hollywood Reporter .

European Film Academy | "Close-Up" Magazine | Winter 2019 The re-usable black water bottle of Spain-based production service company Fresco Film is a minor Instagram celebrity. Like the garden gnome from AMÉLIE, the Fresco bottle has been photographed at tourist sites around the world, including the Colosseum in Rome, Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and the skyline of Bangkok. “It’s a symbol,” explains Esmeralda Ruiz, Fresco’s Head of Marketing and Environmental Sustainability, who says this one conservation effort has helped avoid the use of more than 250,000 plastic water bottles on film sets in 2018 and 2019. Fresco slips a note explaining its sustainability efforts inside each of the bottles it passes out to crews – including on projects like HBO’s GAME OF THRONES, Sony’s SNATCH and Netflix’s WARRIOR NUN – “so whoever uses that bottle is aware of how much they can do.” Awareness of the impact of every individual action is a key component to motivate more productions to “go green,” say sustainability experts across Europe, as is sharing information about success stories and best practices. While there are plenty of resources available online to help European filmmakers take the initiative, the impetus has to come from the makers and backers of the movies themselves, and efforts toward reducing a film’s carbon footprint can and should start at the earliest stages of production – and be measurable afterwards. Read the full story below.