Over the last six years, thanks in the main to the SVOD revolution, Spain, once known for select auteurs – Pedro Almodóvar, J.A. Bayona, Fernando Trueba – has stepped fully onto the world stage as a European film and TV power.
Appropriately then, Spain is the Country in Focus 2025 at Berlin Festival’s European Film Market. Its movie strand says much about Spanish cinema, while Berlin, at large, points up Spain’s larger film industry challenges, shared by much of Europe.
The Focus’ biggest takeaway is Spain’s dramatic explosion of new talent, both producers and directors. In a Spain at the Forefront showcase, 10 Spanish producers making up a Producers Program will talk up their companies and current projects. Another 10 producers form part of Visitors Program at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.
Launched in 1995, Morena Films (“Che”, “Everybody Knows”) will unveil “8,” the latest from “Sex and Lucía” helmer Julio Medem. Avalon, producer of Berlin Golden Bear winner “Alcarràs,” will unpack “Iván and Hadoum,” the feature debut of Ian de la Rosa, who’s drawn heat from co-writing HBO hit “Veneno.”
Otherwise, 18 of the 20 production houses featured at Spain in the Forefront were launched this century and 13 last decade or this.
Since 2018, when Spain’s “Money Heist” gave Netflix its first non-English series blockbuster and Netflix announced its first European Production Hub in Madrid, Spain has stood out as a permanent global streamer power.
Over July 2023-June 2024, Netflix users watched 3.28 billion hours of titles from Spain, just beaten by Korea (8.19 billion), but the second-best performance of any country outside the U.S., doubling French-language viewing, according to Omdia.
Meanwhile, Spain’s ICAA film agency – as part of the brief of its 2021 $1.7 billion Spain European Audiovisual Plan – has sought to shorten the gender gap and forefront new talent.
That will show at Berlin. “Since 2006, Inicia Films has been dedicated to nurturing a new generation of filmmakers,” says founder Valérie Delpierre, one of the Berlin Country in Focus presenters. With Clara Simon’s “Summer 1993” and Pilar Palomero’s “Schoolgirls,” Inicia helped launch the nearest Spain has come to a recent film movement: a new generation of cinema, often from women, grounded in a sense of place but addressing global issues.
The most recent story of Spain’s arthouse cinema, however, has been a growing diversification, often into more mainstream plays. Backing Victor Erice’s “Close Your Eyes,” Pecado Films, also featured at Berlin, is now also driving into animation and minority international co-production. Inicia Films is prepping “Aitas,” a broad comedy from Borja Cobeaga, co-writer of “Spanish Affair,” which grossed $55 million in Spain.
So potential highlights at Spain at the Forefront display a broad gamut: Alba Sotorra’s teen sorority themed “Wolf Grrrls”; Inicia’s animated feature “The Treasure of the Barracuda,” awarded in the same Eurimages funding round as “Flow”; La Cima’s touching reconciliation tale “Face to Face,” from Javier Marco (“Josephine”); Solita’s “Yesterday I Will Love You,” Guillermo Benet’s feature debut; Materia Cinema-Avalon’s doc feature “Qui Som,” on performing group Baro d’evel; and Ringo Media’s reaction to rape drama “Fury,” selected for SXSW, and La Vida DR’s Sitges FanPitch-selected “Salvaje,” about a female bounty hunter living in the mountains of 1871Europe’s.
Spanish cinema has other things going for it. Spanish films domestic market share in 2024 edged up two percentage points to 19%.
Put that down to Santiago Segura whose “Father There is Only One 4” whose $14.0 million box office gave him the highest grossing Spanish movie in Spain for the fifth time in six years, as well as a newer market phenomenon.
Three quality commercial films of social point made for adult audiences– terrorist org infiltrator thriller “Undercover,” heroic bus driver heart warmer “The 47” and dysfunctional Catalan family satire “A House on Fire – scored $8.4 million, $3.4 million and $3.2 million in Spain.
“Other types of films are beginning to connect again with the public, which may well signal a change in the kind of films which will be made in Spain,” says producer Simón de Santiago, at Mod Producciones (“Agora”).
The Mediapro Studio, behind “El 47” and Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” has “pretty ambitious plans for films in the future,” says TMS’ Javier Méndez.
“We defend films’ collective viewing in cinemas but all streamers ask for films and are ever more open to them having theatrical runs,” he adds, citing TMS and Pampa Films’ Disney+ hit “Mesa de regalos,” a wedding scam comedy, which has hit one million ticket sales in Mexican theaters and counting.
Movistar Plus+ has launched a slate of “event auteur films,” such as Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “El ser querido” with Javier Bardem.
Challenges remain, however, for Spain’s film industry.
“There’s been a disconnect. When I went to film school, everybody wanted to be a Spielberg, Zemeckis or Scorsese. Now everyone wants to be like a socially driven, conscious filmmaker making lower budget films, and the system has adjusted to that,” says Nostromo Pictures’ Adrián Guerra.
“The new tax schemes and the different national and local film agency subsidies have promoted a lot of the young talent, many young female auteurs, which is highly, highly positive,” says Alvaro Longoria, at Morena Films (“Che,” Champions”). “But this atomization of small movies by up-and-coming talents is taking the place of the bigger, larger, more industrial productions. I think it’s time to revisit this and try to take this talent to bigger, more commercial movies that travel.”
Mod Producciones is in post on “The Captive,” a Miguel de Cervantes origin tale. Morena is developing a big historical drama, “Malinche,” by Pablo Trapero.
At Nostromo (“Through My Window,” “Apocalypse Z”), Guerra is co-producing Russell Crowe starrer “The Last Druid,” an AFM sales hit for AGC. The film is set up to be shot in Spain, with locations scouting taking place now.
“Tax incentives are very strong in Spain. If you have the local knowledge on how to produce movies for a budget, the right crew and right know-how, you can get a big bang for your buck,” Guerra says.” In Nostromo’s case, we have a long experience with the tax incentive, reliable banks and investors that trust in us,” he adds.
