Javier Marco’s “Face to Face” (“A la cara”), the spin-off from a 2021 Goya winning short, was one of the big winners at this year’s RECLab in Tarragona, Spain which is celebrating its 10th anniversary by doing what it does best: Innovation, which questions many of the often set-in-stone conventions of festivals.
Also among winners at RECLab, part of the REC – Tarragona Intl. Film Festival, were “Jone Batzuetan,” by Sara Fantova, a director on “This Is Not Sweden,” and “Woman Bites Dog,” from Armand Rovira (“Letters to Paul Morrissey”).
“L’homme Abissal o Phaeophytamón,” by Marina Wagner, an “experimental Gothic tale” as she puts it, won the Málaga Work in Progress Award.
Unveiled at RECLab in true post-production – without color-grading, nor soundwork nor digital effects – the feature “Face to Face” picks up but reworks the basic premise of Marco’s short: Pedro, middle-aged, unshaved, dowdily dressed, opens the door of his house to Lina, a famous TV interviewer. She asks if a room in his home is available. But the real reason for her coming is for Pedro to read out aloud to her face one of his recent Internet comments about her: “You deserve what happened to you. I hope you kill yourself too, f***ing bitch. If you want, I’ll help you.”
When he apologizes, the feature takes a different turn to the short, building to a moving finale.
Celebrating 10 Years
A candidate for A-Fest play, “Face to Face” looks like one of the standouts of this year’s RECLab. Its prize, however, by most fest standards, is highly unusual: not cash nor in-kind services but a screening with a real public who answer a call of “Can You Keep a Secret?” attending without knowing what film they’ll see and leaving cell phones in the entrance. Prompted by a compère, they react to what they’ve watched.
Prior Screening Test winners take in “20,000 Species of Bees,” a Berlinale leading performance laureate for Sofía Otero, and SXSW world premiere “Mamífera.”
Headed by Javier García Puerto, REC Festival and RECLab director and also a notable programmer at Tallinn Black Nights Festival, over its first decade, RECLab has focused on first and second features, built around the carefully curated Primer Test, a pix-in-post showcase.
Its highlights over the years take in “Ana by Day,” the debut of Andrea Jaurrieta whose “Nina” proved a standout at Malaga this year; Meritxell Colell’s “Con el viento,” a foundation stone of the newest Catalan cinema; and “Julia Ist,” the first feature from Elena Martín, whose “Creatura” played Cannes 2023 Directors’ Fortnight.
10 RECLab pearls, taking in these titles and also Diana Toucedo’s doc hybrid “Thirty Souls” (“Trinta Lumes”), were made available over the summer on VOD service panorámica, a VOD service focusing on a new generation of Spanish filmmakers. Some of the titles are available once more from Dec. 19 thru Jan. 19, 2025. An exhibition at this year’s event also served to explain what RECLab had achieved in its first decade.
Primer Test has also built up a network of international experts invited to screen the films. This year’s guests include SXSW consultant Jim Kolmar, Berlinale selector Ana David and Locarno selection committee member Daniela Persico.
It also provides invaluable insight for filmmakers. At REC, “we received the advice and support that we needed, at his moment of extreme fragility which is editing, just before closing when you think you may have lost the focus,” said Valérie Delpierre, producer of “Summer 1993 and “20,000 Species of Bees.”
“Primer Test helped us to broaden and enrich the editing process on ‘Cork,’” concurred its director, Mikel Gurrea.
What Sets RECLab Apart
Now, however, REC-Lab is driving into ever more out-of-the-box experiment.
Launched in 1984 with Rotterdam’s Cinemart and forged into a market phenomenon from the late ‘80s by the late, great Wauter Berendrecht, over the next three decades co-pro forums became market cornerstones as the growth of national film subsidies systems in Europe and Latin America allowed producers to be able to look for foreign partners with a reasonable chance of scoring co-financing.
These days, however, there are so many forums that the industry just can’t keep up. Any new entrant has to come in with something different. RECLab does so by coming in on industry building focusing on two axes: People and audiences.
Via its Primer Test strand, where 10 new pix in post are presented to an audience, RECLab still encourages international co-productions among its attendees.
But its unique format fosters open and meaningful conversations around the presented projects, argued former Venice Critics Week head Anette Dujisín, Primer Test co-ordinator.
“By prioritizing international strategies over quick pitch-style sessions, Primer Test enables participants to engage in deeper, more impactful discussions,” Dujisín noted. “This inclusive and interactive approach allows industry experts to build on each other’s feedback, resulting in collaborative insights that extend beyond transactional outcomes like sales or festival placements.”
RECLab 2024 Exhibition
RECLab’s New Initiatives
Three new initiatives further this goal. Overseen by Marika Kozlovska, a Cinema do Brasil consultant, RECPush focuses “on personal connections first, encouraging producers to get to know each other beyond their professional roles. This approach sparks genuine relationships and lays the foundation for meaningful collaborations, setting us apart from other industry events that often prioritize projects over people,” she said. International producers have been sourced from Finland, North Africa, the Czech Republic and Portugal, for instance, who join Spanish producers in activities from regional dances to pottery workshops. “It’s the opposite of classic speed dating and much more human,” said García Puerto.
RECMatch teams indie creators, such as Burnin’ Percebes with project “Royal Films,” with mainstream actors looking to broaden their career: this year Alvaro Cervantes (“Crazy About Her”) and the now Madre-based Dominican Laura Gómez
“We invite the actors and then make a call for projects, then match them, make, or as one of the participants call it, ’a reverse casting,’” García Puerto explained.
Another new initiative, RECVision, spearheaded by Jana Wolff, saw international experts in audience creation brainstorm with the leaders of local initiatives. These took in Granollers’ Young Cineclub Crida Edison, a cineclub programmed by its newest generation of members; Nadir, an audiovisual workshop for kids and young students, from Eloi Sánchez; Transhumant, an itinerant cinema, showing films in hamlets south of the Pyrenees; and Victoria & Savoy, a film program of classics and recent auteur titles for schools students based out of the Ebro region.
“There aren’t too many examples of structures which advise on and improve projects that work directly with audiences,” García Puerto commented.
He added: “Pretty much every festival supports new projects, helps the creation of more films but that raises a large question: Who are going to see them?”
RECLab 2024 Awards: Winning Films
Screening Test Award
“Face to Face,” (A la cara,” Javier Marco, Pecado Films)
In “Josephine,” which world premiered at San Sebastian’s 2021 New Directors strand, Marco made a quietly affecting debut about the serendipitous encounter of two solitary souls delivered with a meticulously dowdy mise-en-scène, top-notch perfs and a measured screenplay. From what was seen at RECLab, Marco looks set to deliver again with a tale of two egotists– a TV star interviewer, an internet troll – treading a difficult path to redemption.
International Deluxe Award
“Jone, Sometimes,” (“Jone, Batzuetan,” Sara Fontova, ESCAC Estudios)
During Bilbao’s Semana Grande, Jone lives her first love with Olga, as her father’s Parkinson’s illness worsens. A Basque-language coming of age and family tale “Jone, Sometimes” marks the first feature from Bilbao-born Sara Fantova, an Escac alum cherry-picked to direct three episodes of “This Is Not Sweden.” The film is produced by the Sergi Casamitjana-led Escac Estudios (“Salve, María”) and Amania Films, headed by director David Pérez Sañudo (“Ane is Missing,” “The Last Romantics”).
National Deluxe Award
“Woman Bites Dog,” (Armand Rovira, From Outer Space)
A “Creation from a humorous, punkish perspective and with a high formal quality,” Rovira has said, calling “Woman Bites Dog” “one part auteur genre, one part mockumentary.” The tale of a film crew which tracks in 16mm the day-to-day of a woman, Xia He, who’s a serial killer of dog abusers, it’s the latest from Rovira, known for “Letters to Paul Morrissey,” a prior RECLan standout.
Málaga Work in Progress Award
“L’homme Abissal o Phaeophytamón,” (Marina Wagner, La Impostura Films)
Presented at Sitges’ WomanInFan in October and most certainly an “experimental Gothic tale,” as Wagner puts it, shot in black-and-white using 19th century lens in an antique camera, to compose a film made up of stills. Set in 1879, and narrated via letters, it turns on a young man who, dying, is sent to his sister who oversees a laboratory that using algae to treat badly wounded. She offers her brother the chance of eternal life.
