Uruguay’s Coral Cine Closing Global Distribution Rights to “Benedetti, 60 Años con Luz” Documentary

A special project detailing Mario Benedetti’s love life is gaining global attention.

Uruguay’s Coral Cine is closing Spanish distribution rights with Barcelona-based A Contracorriente Films for its documentary “Benedetti, 60 Años con Luz,” which chronicles the 60-year love story of the renowned Uruguayan author-poet and his wife Luz López Alegre.

Mario Benedetti & Luz López AlegreHelmed by Coral Cine’s Andres Varela, the project was shot by Oscar-nominated DoP Cesar Charlone.

Charlone is the sole juror of the recent 2nd ARCA International Festival of Films on Art (Jan. 2-7).

Mexico’s Vendo Cine is snagging Mexican rights while Buenos Aires and L.A.-based international sales company Punctum, which focuses exclusively on Latin American documentaries, has grabbed worldwide sales rights.

A Contracorriente first eyed the documentray at the Iberseries & Platino Iberoamerican film-TV event last September in Madrid.

The documentary has since opened in Uruguay where it played for an unprecedented 12 weeks, said Varela.

Rodrigo Cortés Directing the Warsaw Ghetto-Set Romantic Musical Drama “Love Gets a Room”

Rodrigo Cortés is preparing for some love and music…

The 48-year-old Spanish film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and writer will helm Love Gets a Room, a Warsaw Ghetto-set romantic musical drama.

Rodrigo Cortés

The film will star Clara Rugaard and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo.

Shot under the radar in order to magnify impact nearer to release when theaters return, said its producer Adrián Guerra, Love Gets a Room is produced and financed by Guerra’s Nostromo Pictures, with Lionsgate International handling international rights and CAA representing U.S. rights.

Top Spanish independent A Contracorriente Films will release the film in Spain theatrically at the end of the year.

Written by German bestseller writer David Safier and Cortés, the film captures a group of actors as they perform in the heart of the Warsaw Ghetto, in a life or death context on a run-down stage, Love Gets a Room, a real-life musical comedy that was written by playwright Jerzy Jurandot, a Polish Jew, and performed by a group of actors in the winter of 1942 at the Femina Theater in Warsaw.

“Safier discovered the existence of the original work and wanted to honor that beautiful achievement made by a group of actors now forgotten in the middle of the blackness,” Guerra told Variety.

The text of the play that is represented in the film is the original, as it was performed in 1942. The lyrics of the songs have survived, with the music for the film being composed in the tradition of the musical theater of that time. All the songs have been shot live and the sound of the original takes has been used, without playback.

Told in real time —as Cortés’ acclaimed BuriedLove Gets a Room “engulfs the audience in an emotional adventure to discover a side of history never before told on film,” Guerra said.

This pictures “all kinds of artists (actors, musicians, writers) still performing, under the most unlikable circumstances, only to save their sanity, to stoke the art they deeply love, to engage in a civilizing, humanity-affirming exchange,” he added.

Love Gets a Room captures Cortés on a roll, after the publication of his second novel, The Extraordinary Years, written in the great Spanish tradition of the absurd which became one of the unexpected literary hits this summer in Spain.