Match Factory, Sergi López Board Oliver Laxe’s Almodóvar-backed Next 

The Match Factory is set to handle international sales on a new film by “Fire Will Come” director Oliver Laxe, headlined by Sergi López, star of Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth.”

Having begun production, shooting in Spain and then Morocco, the untitled Oliver Laxe project is a Movistar Plus+ original film produced with Pedro and Agustín Almodovar’s El Deseo, Laxe’s Galicia-based label Filmes da Ermida, Oriol Maymó’s Uri Films in Barcelona, and Paris’s 4 A 4 Productions.   

The latest from Laxe follows Cannes wins for all his first three features. 2010’s  “You Are All Captains,” Laxe’s debut feature, walked off with a Directors’ Fortnight Fipresci Award; 2016’s “Mimosas” scooped the Critics’ Week top Grand Prize, “Fire Will Come” a 2019 Un Certain Regard Jury Prize. 

Co-written with “Matadero” director Santiago Fillol, also a co-scribe on “Fire Will Come,” Laxe’s next turns on a man and his son who arrive at a rave lost in the middle of what are described as the arid and ghostly mountains of southern Morocco. They are looking for Marina, the man’s daughter and boy’s sister, who disappeared months ago at another rave. 

“Driven by fate, they decide to follow a group of ravers in search of one last party to be held in the desert, in the hope that Marina will be there,” the brief synopsis runs.

“Life will challenge the characters. It will put them to the test in a radical and stark way, forcing them to ask themselves the important questions, to look inside, to search for the meaning of life,” Laxe said in a written statement. 

“Sometimes, when human beings are pushed to the limit, confronted with extreme challenges, their transcendental deep inner beauty can emerge,” he added to  Variety.

The son is played by young Bruno Núñez, outstanding in early episodes of “La Mesías.” As in other Laxe movies, most roles will be taken by non-professional actors. 

With López, “together they will be the vehicle to show the convulsions that affect the world of our time, a time that is asking us all to look inside ourselves,” the filmmaker declared.

“El Deseo was born to produce Pedro Almodóvar’s films. With the expertise acquired over time, we also like to back directors which have their own world, which are beyond fashion and different,” Agustín Almodóvar told Variety.” “Oliver is one of these rare cases, as was Lucrecia Martel and Alex de la Iglesia at their beginnings.”

Production Details

The film is being shot in Super 16, said Laxe, first in Spain, filming at locations in Aragon’s Teruel and Zaragoza, before moving to Morocco. 

Maymó is also serving as head of production. Director (“Dead Slow Ahead”) and cinematographer Mauro Herce, a Goya Award winner for his lensing of “Fire Will Come,” repeats with Laxe as DP; Laia Ateca (“Perfect Life”) is the film’s art director; Nadia Acimi (‘Fire Will Come,” “Mimosas”) heads up costume design; musician David Kangding Ray is thecomposer of the soundtrack.

Laxe’s new title conflates three film financing models: Regional co-production in Spain; international co-production; and streamer investment. 

The film is backed by Galicia’s Agadic and Catalonia’s ICEC, Spain’s ICAA and France’s CNC, among public sector film agencies as well as the E.U.’s Creative Europe Media Program and Council of Europe’s Eurimages fund, noted producer Xavi Font, at Filmes da Ermida. It has also accessed a Moroccan shoot incentive. 

IP rights are split between Movistar Plus+ and the film’s independent producers. 

Backed by the marketing muscle of Movistar Plus+, the biggest Spanish pay-TV/SVOD operator owned by telco giant Telefónica, Laxe’s latest will be released by independent distributor BTeam Pictures, which handled “20 Species of Bees”and Lullaby, Laxe’s new feature will be given a determined release in Spanish theaters before being made available in exclusivity on Movistar Plus+. 

“Movistar Plus+ is moving into film production but also with a large respect for traditional players, both independent production and distribution,” Font said.

Movistar Plus+: A Big New Kid on Spain’s Cinema Block 

Laxe’s new film is one of the earliest titles to go into production of five features on Movistar Plus+’s first movie slate, unveiled in January.

“The Beasts’” Rodrigo Sorogoyen, “Marshland’s” Alberto Rodríguez, “Maixabel’s” Iciar Bollaín and “Cardo” co-creator and star Ana Rujas direct the slate’s other titles.

Movistar Plus+ is aiming to create event films. Its revolution, Font noted, is that it hopes to do so with some of Spain’s biggest auteurs.

“The features bet on fiction with a unique auteurist vision but also have the ambition to reach a broad audience. That formula’s worked very well on the original series we’ve released over the last seven years,” Guillermo Farré, Movistar Plus+ head of original films & Spanish cinema, told Variety.    

“Fire Will Come” confirms all the poised formal promise of ‘You Are All Captains’ and ‘Mimosas,’ while bringing greater depth and generosity of human observation to his rich, abundant mood-harvesting,” read Variety’s review. It “represents another step toward major auteur status for its unobtrusively gifted helmer.” 

With preeminent Spanish industry backing, the latest film from Laxe may take another step in the same direction. 

Eight clues to Oliver Laxe’s New Production:

You say, Agustín, that Oliver is different? Could you give an example?

Almodóvar: He’s a director with a sense of adventure, where a film’s very shoot forms part of its inspiration, and search. His shoots aren’t locked, everything anticipated. He shoots things generated by the interaction of the crew when it films. Oliver Laxe has a large and original talent, and that attracts us. 

Is the film told from the point of view of the son? 

Laxe: No, the point of view is that of the father. It’s really important to build a strong relation between the dad and son. They are a team and have a mission. I’d really like to express tenderness between them, how they treat each other. We will see the same tenderness in the group of drivers and between the ravers and civil population. They’re just good people who want to have a simple life.

Agustín, did Oliver come to you or you go to him? 

Almodóvar: We’re always pretty pro-active. We went to him. We coincided at a prize gala. We told him we’d always liked a lot what we’d seen of his work, and he could count on us as co-producers if he needed us. That’s just what’s happened.  

What’s been the impact of Movistar Plus+ backing on the film?

Font: Without Movistar Plus+’s economic backing, we couldn’t be making the film as it is written. That’s hugely important. Could this film be the most open of Oliver Laxe’s to date?

Farré: It’s a very personal film but has certain elements which could make it more open that the first three features. It’s the search for a missing person. There’s an adventure edge. It’s a road movie about people who end up in the same place who otherwise wouldn’t have met one another. It’s a fantastic journey.   

And could it be seen as a step-up in scale?

Farré: There are few visions that are so unique and different as Oliver’s and he always has the ambition, without damaging what he wants to tell, to achieve more. This is a very ambitious film in its themes and production levels. 

Oliver, you called “Fire Will Come” a “dry melodrama.” Turning on bedrock questions of identity and family bonds, will your next film be somewhat “wetter”?

Laxe: Not really. I’ll use the same language. In a way, we trust in a cinema that hides. We don’t want to say, we want to evoke.