Tag Archives: Latido Films

David Pérez Sañudo Agrees to Two-Picture Deal with Latido Films

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David Pérez Sañudo has landed a two-picture deal…

Latido Films has sealed a two-picture deal with the 36-year-old Spanish filmmaker whose debut feature Ane, repped by Latido, swept three Spanish Academy Goya Awards in 2021.

David Pérez SañudoLatido will take world sales rights on both titles.

The move comes as Spanish sales companies battle to retain top-flight talent, increasingly in the crosshairs of international counterparts.

With Pérez Sañudo, Latido gets one of Spain’s most exciting young directors, particularly for a skill now held at high value in and outside the U.S.: His ability to channel genre and sub-genre, often in individual scenes, injecting them with a larger sense of narrative.

Latido handled world sales rights on films on another director with that sensitivity to sub-genre, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, from May God Save Us (2016) to The Realm (2018) and The Beasts (2022), which trounced multiple Cannes winners to win best foreign film at France’s Cesars last year.

First up for Latido is Pérez Sañudo’s Los últimos románticos, (“Azken Erromantikoak”) which has gone into production, shooting principally in Gernika, Bizkaia, near the Basque city of Bilbao.

A second chance drama adapting Txani Rodríguez’s Euskadi Prize for Literature, it turns on Irune, 40, a paper mill employee in a blue-collar town who is insecure, a bit manic, and a hypochondriac, leading a lonely life, in which the only person she could describe as a friend is one neighbor. She is also a kind person.

When an ominous lump appears on her chest, a labor dispute breaks out at her mill. Drawn in with the strikers, and contacting far more with her context, her life takes a surprising turn for the better.

“Los últimos románticos proposes a personal, individual journey, the unique story of Irune at a very specific moment in her life,” Pérez Sañudo explained to Variety.

“It’s a story of mourning and overcoming which is perceived in a luminous way,” he added, noting that the film “strikes a fragile balance between the dramatic and the comic, but also between the individual and the collective” and “an interesting debate between the old and the new, between experience and the imminent, memory and future.”

Written by Pérez Sañudo and Marina Parés, reuniting after Ane is Missing, “Los últimos románticos stars Miren Gaztañaga.

In their fourth collaboration, the film is produced by two of Spain’s most ambitious regional players, Seville’s La Claqueta and San Sebastián’s Irusoin, which partnered notably on San Sebastián winner The Endless Trench.

The second title in the two-picture deal, currently in development, will be announced at Cannes.

“We are thrilled to be working again with David Perez Sañudo, after his debut film Ane’ scored three Goya Awards. With ‘Los Últimos Románticos,’ he is ready to tell a story that will not only connect but will also stay long with the audience after leaving the cinema,” said Oscar Alonso, Latido Films head of acquisitions.

“We look forward to see him grow in a way that we did when we worked on three films with Rodrigo Sorogoyen, now an international recognized director,” Alonso added. “Last but not least, having La Claqueta and Irusoin as production partners on board of his sophomore film, let us know we are in the safest of hands to have a film with an outstanding production value.”

Latido Films Acquires Adriana Azores’ “Los pequeños amores” for International Sales

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Adriana Azores’ latest film is one step closer to international distribution…

The 63-year-old Spanish actress’ Los pequeños amores, the latest film from Celia Rico, has been acquired for international sales by Spain-based Latido Films.

Adriana AzoresProduced by Barcelona-based Arcadia Motion Pictures, Rico’s second feature is set in a bucolic countryside. It weighs in as a mother-daughter two-hander sparked after strongly independent mother Ani falls over walking the dog and is forced to use a wheelchair to get around.

Daughter Teresa cuts short a vacation to come to her side, their co-habitation grating and revealing multiple – sometime generational –  differences as the film peels back the layers of their relation, exposing both women’s ambitions and fears.

Azores plays Ani, María Vázquez is Teresa.

Adriana Azores, Los pequeños amores

“There are several reasons Latido had to be involved very early on this beautiful movie: We had already appreciated Celia’s first film and saw the great talent she has and of course we love working with Arcadia, the producers of the film, and even more after the experience of working together with “The Beasts,” explained Latido Films head Antonio Saura.

Though born in Seville, Rico studied at Barcelona U. and has settled in the Catalan capital. Her debut feature, Journey to a Mother’s Room, which won a special mention at San Sebastian’s New Directors competition, has caused her to be cited as a leading light of a new generation of young women cineastes based in Barcelona which takes in Clara Simon and Pilar Palomero, among film directors.

Los pequeños amores is scheduled for release in 2023.

Cecilia Suárez to Star in ABC Drama Pilot “Promised Land”

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Cecilia Suárez has landed a new starring role…

The 49-year-old Mexican actress and activist has been set as a lead opposite Augusto Aguilera in John Ortiz’s ABC drama pilot Promised Land.

Cecilia Suarez,

Written by Matt Lopez, Promised Land is an epic, generation-spanning drama about two Latinx families vying for wealth and power in California’s Sonoma Valley.

Suárez plays Lettie Sandoval, the matriarch of the Sandoval family, a wealthy vineyard-owning family in the Sonoma Valley. Lettie will do anything to keep her family, with all its fraying allegiances, intact. She is proud of the fortune the Sandovals have built, but the arrival of a figure from Lettie’s past soon causes her to question whether the cost of achieving the American Dream is too high.

Aguilera will play Mateo Sandoval,t he hardworking, highly capable general manager of the Heritage Vineyard, but as the stepson to patriarch Joe Sandoval (Ortiz), he has never felt fully accepted by the wealthy, vineyard-owning Sandoval family. Mateo finds himself at a crossroads when a young immigrant who reminds him of his roots arrives to work in the Sandoval household.

Previously cast in the pilot are Mariel Molino as Camila Sandoval, the youngest daughter of the Sandoval family, Christina Ochoa as Veronica Sandoval, the eldest daughter of the Sandovals, as well as Andres Velez as Carlos Rincón, a young immigrant who comes to the Heritage Vineyard in search of a better life.

Suárez just wrapped the title role in Latido Films’ feature Alegria, directed by Violeta Salama. She can be seen in the new Netflix Spanish mini-series Someone Has To Die, written and directed by her long-time collaborator Manolo Caro.

She also starred in the Amazon limited series 3 Caminos. For the last three seasons, she starred in Manolo Caro’s popular Netflix series: The House of Flowers (La Casa de las Flores). She also is the first Spanish speaking actress to be nominated for an International Emmy Award for her role in the Capadoccia series for HBO.

Aguilera recently recurred as Liver opposite Ray Romano and Cristin Milioti in HBO Max’s Made For Love, a half-hour series adaptation based on Alissa Nutting’s tragicomic novel. Aguilera was also seen as one of the leads in Nic Refn’s Amazon series Too Old To Die Young, opposite Miles Teller.

He was previously seen in 20th Century Fox’s The Predator, directed by Shane Black and the Hulu pilot Citizen directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon as well as the Audience Network series Ice directed by Antoine Fuqua.

Paco Leon to Star in the Spanish Psychological Thriller “From the Shadows”

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Paco Leon is heading into the Shadows…

The 46-year-old Spanish actor will star opposite Leonor Watling in psychological thriller From the Shadows (Desde la Sombra), a film adaptation by Spanish writer Juan José Millas, winner of most of Spain’s foremost literary awards, including the Planeta, Nadal and National Narrative Awards.

Paco Leon

The film will be directed by Felix Viscarret

A star of sitcom Aida, a free-to-air television phenomenon from 2005-14, and most recently Netflix Mexico’s hit House of Flowers, Leon co-wrote and directed Arde Madrid, a Movistar Plus Rose d’Or winning original series.

Star of Pedro Almodovar’s Academy Award-winning Talk to Her, Watling confirmed her comic talents most recently in Movistar Plus’ excruciatingly discomforting Russian mob comedy Nasdrovia.

Produced by Academy Award winning Tornasol Media and co-produced by Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup, From the Shadows will be brought onto the international market at Ventana Sur by Latido Films.

Co-written by David Muñoz, From the Shadows turns on Damián who, to escape from his boss, hides in a massive antique wardrobe that is delivered to a middle-class home, inhabited by Lucia and Fede and their teenage daughter. A persistent fantasist – he imagines himself as a TV celebrity delivering candid interviews to prestigious journalists – Damián realizes that staying in the wardrobe gives him a chance to lead the normal life he has always missed.

He becomes the family’s guardian angel, doing the housework in its absence, as his hold on reality crumbles and Lucia, on anti-depressants, believes the wardrobe hides the specter of her dead brother.

“This story is a portrait of the madness, sometimes strange, sometimes comical, we all have: Dialogues we carry on with ourselves, how we fall in love, how we deny realities,” said Viscarret, saying he likes to dance between the comical and melancholic.

Championed by Fernando Trueba off the back of a notable short, Dreamers, Viscarret’s debut, Under the Stars, produced by Cristina Huete, confirmed his passion for bringing a human dimension to lost cause characters, which he aims to repeat in From the Shadows, he said.

“I like to fix my gaze on clumsy, hurt or humiliated characters who, generating compassion, struggle to make things better. Even if that fight is not successful, even if the final redemption – like in this case – is loaded with contradictions, it makes it all worthwhile.”

“Felix is one of Spain’s most talented young directors, he has a unique capacity of inventing worlds. In this case, the novel he adapts is from one of Spanish greatest living writers,” said Latido Films head Antonio Saura.

Saura added: “What is even more interesting, it is a great adaptation, that mixes humor and genre in a very intelligent way and, of course, the cast is brilliant!”