In the last two years, Spanish directors have had more films in Cannes Festival main competition \u2013 five \u2013 than any other country in the world.<\/p>\n
On June 17, Prime Video announced that Spain was its No. 1 non-English export force, recently scoring as many hits in its Non-English Global Top 10 films as the rest of the world put together.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/p>\n
Clearly, as Thierry Fr\u00e9maux put it explaining three Spanish competition titles this year, Spain is living a \u201cmovement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of that momentum looks set to be caught on June 21 in Shanghai at Stories Travel Further \u2013 Literature and Cinema in Spain-China Dialogue, a three-part session, part of the Spain \u2013\u00a0Where Talent Ignites campaign, unspool at the Shanghai Film Festival.<\/p>\n
In one major highlight, Albert Serra, a Cannes competition contender in 2022 whose English-language debut \u201cOut of This World,\u201d starring Riley Keough is being talked up for a major 2026 festival, will talk with China\u2019s Bi Gan, a Cannes 2025\u00a0 Special Jury Prize winner for \u201cResurrection,\u201d about storytelling, adaptation processes, creative vision and the capacity to connect cultures. <\/p>\n
They are likely to find common ground. The Tahiti-set \u201cPacification,\u201d wrote Variety, recorded \u201cthe enduring colonialist entitlement of the French Republic territory\u2019s Gallic custodians and the ever-itching resentment felt by its indigenous population.\u201d Co-producing \u201cMagellan,\u201d directed by Filipino Lav D\u00edaz, Serra adopted the viewpoint of another culture supposedly distant from his own.<\/p>\n
Bi Gan\u2019s \u201cResurrection,\u201d meanwhile, is described by Variety as a \u201cmarvelously maximalist movie of opulent ambition, an overarchingly melancholy elegy for the dream of 20th-century cinema and the lives we lived within it,\u201d no less.<\/p>\n
Serra won high praise from Variety for his latest release, \u201cAfternoons of Solitude,\u201d a remarkable documentary that observes the matador life in all its absurd beauty and obscene bloodshed,\u201d which won San Sebasti\u00e1n top Golden Shell in 2024., which again demonstrated his powers of empathy.<\/p>\n
\u2018Safe\u2019 IP: Spanish Books<\/p>\n
He will not be the only Spanish talent on display in Shanghai, however. At Stories Travel Further \u2013 Literature and Cinema in Spain-China Dialogue, Fernando Benzo, author and secretary general of the Spanish Federation of Publishers, will drill down on a \u201csafe intellectual property: books,\u201d as he put it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you work on a book, usually you already have the fan base. You have all the people that have read those books, so it\u2019s a stronger bet than if you work with original material.\u201d That readership is powered up organically by one of the largest language markets in the world. Also, he told Variety, \u201cyou have a powerful book industry and a powerful audiovisual industry, so the result has to be good.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact it already is. On June 17 in Madrid, at Prime Video Presents, a preview of Prime Video Spain\u2019s upcoming titles, Prime Video announced that Spain-produced Originals are its biggest non-English export.<\/p>\n
Of the six Spanish movies in the Top 10 of Non-English Prime Original Films over June 1-7, five morever are literary adaptations. These are comprised of small screen makeovers of Argentine-Spanish writer Mercedes Ron\u2019s \u201cMy Fault\u201d Wattpad trilogy and \u201cTell Me Softly,\u201d the first installment in another Ron YA romantic melodrama trilogy, and zombie action thriller \u201cApocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End,\u201d adapting Galician author Manel Loureiro\u2019s novel.<\/p>\n
Top 10 Non-English Prime Original Films: June 1-7<\/p>\n
1. \u201cSystem\u201d (India)<\/p>\n
2. \u201cNo Place to Be Single\u201d (\u201cNon \u00e8 un Paese per Single,\u201d Italy)<\/p>\n
3. \u201cCulpa M\u00eda\u201d (Spain)<\/p>\n
4. \u201cCulpa Nuestra\u201d (Spain)<\/p>\n
5. \u201cCulpa Tuya\u201d (Spain)<\/p>\n
6. \u201cAgent Zeta\u201d (Spain)<\/p>\n
7. \u201cVengeance\u201d (\u201cVenganza;\u201d Mexico)<\/p>\n
8. \u201cTell Me Softly\u201d (D\u00edmelo Bajito,\u201d Spain)<\/p>\n
9. \u201cApocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End\u201d (\u201cApocalipsis Z: El principio del fin,\u201d Spain)<\/p>\n
10. \u201cThe Tank\u201d (\u201cDer Tiger,\u201d Germany)<\/p>\n
Source: Prime Video<\/p>\n
Carla Sim\u00f3n, Nicol\u00e1s M\u00e9ndez, Turbo Shorts: Further International Breakout Talent, & Other Spanish Creative Industries<\/p>\n
Literature and Cinema in Spain-China Dialogue will unspool as Spain rolls off a larger cultural lift-off. World premiered at the Cannes Film Festival \u2013 as part of Where Talent Ignites, organized by Audiovisual From Spain-ICEX \u2013 three short films, to screen at the Shanghai\u2019s Dialogue, captures once more Spanish creative momentum. Framing international breakout talent, they also open a different door onto contemporary Spanish creativity, linking cinema, fashion, design, music, performance, animation and contemporary visual storytelling.<\/p>\n
A brief closer look at the three shorts:<\/p>\n
\u201cFlamenco\u201d Director Carla Sim\u00f3n<\/p>\n
The latest from Sim\u00f3n, a 2022 Berlin Golden Bear winner for \u201cAlcarr\u00e0s\u201d and 2025 Cannes competition contender with \u201cRomer\u00eda,\u201d has built an international reputation for a cinema grounded in a sense place while exploring universal issues. In \u201cFlamenco,\u201d she creates a psychological, emotional and cultural parable plumbing Spain\u2019s contemporary flamenco scene and creativity. In it, Roc\u00edo, played by Roc\u00edo Molina, a leading light of the international flamenco vanguard, returns to her Ebro Delta home to attend the funeral of her mother, a bastion of traditional flamenco. At a later theater performance, however, Roc\u00edo dances assimilating, she senses, the spirit of her mother. \u201cUnderstanding where you come from and using it in creative terms sets you free,\u201d Sim\u00f3n told Variety, talking about Roc\u00edo and herself.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cLa Tarara,\u201d Director Nicol\u00e1s M\u00e9ndez<\/p>\n
M\u00e9ndez broke out directing Rosalia\u2019s extraordinary music vid \u201cBerghain.\u201d The focus of La Tarara, however, is not music, but fashion. It turns on Carmen (Ingrid Garc\u00eda Jonsson), brainy but socially tongue-tied whose sister (Barbara Lennie, star of Almod\u00f3var\u2019s \u201cBitter Christmas\u201d) works in fashion. When sis takes off for a week, she moves into her flat to take care of her obstreperous nephew. It\u2019s only when Carmen dons her sister\u2019s red dress, which she brings back from the cleaners, that she establishes a connection with her nephew. She also gains in much-needed assurance. \u201cLa Tarara\u201d marks M\u00e9ndez\u2019s first fiction film. Compared to \u201cBerghain,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m really interested in trying something much more grounded but talking not just about fashion but the creative act itself, its transformative power and as a form of communication,\u201d M\u00e9ndez has told Variety. <\/p>\n
\u201cLa Llama\u201d Director: Pau L\u00f3pez, Gerardo del Hierro<\/p>\n
An animated short film from creative duo L\u00f3pez and Hierro, known as Turbo, \u201cLa Llama\u201d pictures a young man exploring an ever mutating house. Both are drawn from Spanish auteurist designer Jaime Hayon\u2019s arresting sense of design \u2013 a protagonist with a beak nose, shiny colors, an avoidance of sharp angles \u2013\u00a0 which recreates over a century of Spanish design and architecture. Every single object pictured in the animated film \u2013 chairs, tables, sofas, a bed, even a brilliant red ash tray \u2013\u00a0 are made by designers from Spain. Meanwhile, galvanizing the short and connecting its 2D\/3D animation not only to design but music, the short is galvanised by a score by remarkable young Spanish flamenco guitarist Yerai Cort\u00e9s and voiceover by notable singer La Tania, who dispenses advise to wannabe creators: \u201cFirst comes emotion, then creation.\u201d \u201cExplore disobedience.\u201d Recreating some of the design\/architecture wonders of Spain \u2013 Gaudi\u2019s Sagrada Familia, for instance \u2013 \u201cLa Llama\u201d captures an extraordinary Spain which sometimes still escapes the homogenization of economies of scale and global brand licensing driving much of architecture and cityscapes worldwide today.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/p>\n
Best of Variety<\/p>\n
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