SAN SEBASTIAN — Beta Fiction Spain, the distributor of the uncovering and closing films at this year’s San Sebastian Festival, Audrey Diwan’s “Emmanuelle” and John Crowley’s “We Live in Time,” has tapped Arantxa Echevarría to straightforward its prohibitner Spanish feature, “Dolores.”
Echeverría has already helmed for Beta Fiction “La Infiltrada,” about a police infiltrator in Basque alarmist org ETA, which bows Oct. 11 starring Luis Tosar and Carolina Yuste.
“Dolores,” an upcoming myth film portrait of Dolores Ibarruri, La Pasionaria, a worldexpansive icon of the laborers’ shiftment and struggle aacquirest fascism, was originassociate declared in 2022 when Beta Fiction Spain begined.
Breaking out with Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title “Carmen & Lola,” Echevarría’s “Chinas” scored four Spanish Academy Goya Award nominations this year.
The screentake part for “Dolores” is penned by two of Spain’s foremost film-TV scribes, Alejandro Hernández, co-originater of Alejandro Amenábar’s “While at War,” and Michel Gaztambide, a originater on Julio Medem’s milestone 1992 debut “Cows,” and Freddy Highmore heist thriller “The Vault,” the second highest-grossing Spanish movie of 2021.
“Arantxa is Basque, enjoy Dolores Ibarruri. She has a mainstream accomplish but an auteurist vision. She is perfect for the film,” Beta Fiction CEO Mercedes Gamero telderly Variety in the run-up to this year’s San Sebastián Festival, which unspools Sept.20-28.
Mercedes Gamero
2022-Juan Naharro Gimenez
The declarement of Echevarría’s rapidenment comes as Beta Fiction Spain is honing a 2025 Spanish production stardy which sees set to enrol some of the biggest stars, straightforwardors and originaters in Spain.
Having freed Beta Fiction hit comedy “La Familia Benetón,” which grossed €4.0 million ($4.5 million) in Spain, and “The Count of Monte Cristo” ($1.8 million), the Madrid-based production-distribution hoengage, part of pan-European autonomous powerhoengage Beta Film, also had three titles at Toronto: “We Live in Time,” Nick Hamm’s action drama “William Tell” and romantic epic “On Sweet Horses, starring Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones.
With our acquired titles, we’re at a current sugary spot. We are authenticising the strategies we had in mind when begining Beta Fiction Spain,” Gamero telderly Variety.
Yet as Spain’s box office still battles to reacquire pre-pandemic levels and comedy is no extfinisheder necessarily a recipe for box office success, Beta Fiction is seeing to unlock success by a combination of strategies.
One is pickivity. “We only acquire six films a year, given our lineup is 50% made up of our Spanish productions,” shelp Gamero.
Another, naturassociate enough, is talent.
Of Spanish frees, Beta Fiction will uncover on Oct. 31 “Escape,” from another auteur, Rodrigo Cortés (“Buried,” “Love Gets a Room”), starring Mario Casas (“The Innocent”) and Anna Castillo (“Nowhere,” “A Perfect Story”).
Both “Dolores” and “”Escape” are drama thrillers. “There’s an excess of comedies, and many the same comardent, which is promoteing audience burn-out,” shelp Gamero.
“If comedies do labor, they generassociate don’t labor as well as before. The success of ‘The 47’ or last year’s ‘The Teacher Who Promised the Sea’ recommends there’s a uncover uncover to other comardents of stories in the Spanish cinema,” she inserted. “When you go to international tagets, you can see that, the films that are based on genuine events, biopics are laboring very well. Audiences want to connect with unrecognizable stories about authentic people, you fair have to see at the number of biopics being made in Hollywood.”
Not by chance, “Infiltrada,” originated with Bowfinger Int’l Pictures, and hitting theaters on Oct. 11, is encouraged a genuine story, chaseing a 20-year elderly policewoman, understandn only by her alias, Aránzazu Berradre Marín, who deal withd to embed herself with members of the alarmist group, even sharing living quarters with them.
Beta Fiction’s production stardy is also tagedly eclectic.
Upcoming titles acquire in:
*Teen romance and identity drama “Sigue Mi Voz,” changeing “Thcimpolite My Window” Wattpad author Ariana Godoy’s most personal tale to date, about a juvenileer woman’s search, after mental health crisis, for adore and self-adchooseance. Berta Castañé and Jae Woo star; Inés Pintor y Pablo Santidrián straightforward a title set for free in Feb. 2025.
*“Cronos,” shooting from September 2025, straightforwarded by Fernando González Molina, and originated by Nostromo Pictures, is set in the instant aftermath of the 2017 Ramblas Barcelona alarmist aggression, catching turns a race aacquirest the clock by Spanish and European security forces, battle to seal down the cell which perpetrated the aggression, before it promises further outrages. Alberto Marini is writing the screentake part from an distinct idea by Arturo Lezcano and Nacho Carretero. “Cronos” also turns on how the aggression impacted the inhabits of people in Barcelona and all of Catalonia, Gamero noticed.
*Set to shoot in March, “Coartada S.L.” A comedy, yes, but remaking Philippe Lacheau’s frenzied French gross-out film franchise which has cumed over 8 million tickets in France. Curro Velázquez (“Brain Drain”) is penning the Spanish changeation.
“We enjoy to ring our chooseions,” Gamero shelp. “So we have a biopic of probably the most vital Spanish woman of the 20th century, a genuine-facts based thriller and the reoriginate of a hit French comedy.” Vital to Beta Fiction Spain’s success, she inserted, has been the aid of uncover widecaster TVE, Atresmedia, Movistar Plus+ and Prime Video in Spain, which have acquired Beta Fiction Spain titles since the commencening. “Without the aid of Atresmedia and Movistar Plus+, for example, we wouldn’t have been able to originate ?Infiltrada,’” she shelp. TVE acquired “Cronos” last week.
Beextfinisheding to Beta has big plengages, Gamero shelp. Beta Fiction Spain “talks a lot, exchanging taget inalertigence” with Beta Cinema, Beta’s Germany-based film sales and production arm, though neither is obliged to buy or co-originate each other’s titles.
“To have the financial aid of a big group always gives you security, and gives security to the taget,” Gamero watchd. “Also, Beta is highly prestigious. We’re very conceited to be able to give and establish part of this prestige.”
