Spain took the spotlight at the Marche du Film on Tuesday afternoon with a Cinema From Spain panel in which sales agents were given a platform to present one of their features currently selling in the market.

Moderated by Tito Rodríguez, marketing policy director at Spain’s Institute of Cinematography and the Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), the presentation was broken up into four blocks with one dedicated to each of the participating companies: Latido Films, Filmax, Moonrise Pictures and Bendita Films.

Filmax presented “The People Upstairs,” produced by Catalan company Imposible Films, in which acclaimed director Cesc Gay, a former Cannes Special Award of the Youth winner for “Nico and Dani,” tells the story of a couple who invite their noisy neighbors over for dinner. There a surprising proposition ignites an evening of excess and catharsis. Gay was joined in the presentation by Filmax sales agent Ivan Diaz and actor Javier Cámara, who previously starred in Gay’s Spanish Academy Goya winning film “Truman.” Filmax hopes to premiere the film this autumn.

“I had a neighbor, a woman who moaned and screamed so loud during sex that my wife and I started talking about what we could do about it,” Gay recalled of the film’s origins. “So, when I was writing this script I was laughing, and people would come into my office to see what was wrong.”

“Remakes are very popular right now,” Diaz responded when asked about the film’s international potential. “I’m sure we are going to have two things here, a film that travels well overseas which producers will also want to remake in their own languages.”

According to Cámara, “If anyone worries about this being a ‘Spanish’ story, I can say the theatrical productions have been a success all over the world, with each actor playing the characters so different.”

By Variety - See full article here