Film Factory Acquires Jonas Trueba’s ‘The Reconquest’ (EXCLUSIVE)
MADRID — In the run-up to September’s Toronto and San Sebastian festivals, Barcelona-based Film Factory has acquired world sales right to “La Reconquista” (“The Reconquest”), a nostalgia-laced love story marking the fourth feature from Jonas Trueba, one of the leading lights of Spain’s newest generation of filmmakers.
Film Factory will introduce “The Reconquest” to buyers at the Toronto gathering before it world-premieres in competition Sept. 22 at San Sebastian, the highest-profile film event in the Spanish-speaking world.
That San Sebastian competition berth and now pick-up from one of the Spanish-speaking world’s biggest sales agents gives the maximum exposure to date to Trueba, who has maintained a consistent output since 2010 despite a post-recession industrial context in which new talent, especially, has had to look for alternative financing and distribution channels.
Trueba’s fourth feature in six years, “The Reconquest” returns to a theme explored in three previous dramedies: the not-so-young looking to gain (2013’s “The Wishful Thinkers”), retain (2015’s “The Romantic Exiles”) or regain (“Every Song Is About Me”) a sense of fulfillment through love. The film’s whimsical ironies, cultural references and stubbornly romantic male protagonists give the films a distinctly French feel. Road movie “The Romantic Exiles” was indeed shot and set in France.
In “The Reconquest,” which shuttles between past and present, Manuela and Olmo meet up one day for a drink after years of not having seen each other. Then she gives him a letter that he wrote to her when they were high-school sweethearts.
“Over one night on the town in Madrid, to the heart of music and cocktails, Manuela and Olmo will reunite in a future they promised one another 15 years ago when they were teenagers experiencing first love,” the official synopsis reads.
The new film, like Trueba’s first three, was produced by Javier Lafuente, based out of Los Ilusos Films. Itsaso Arana (“Las altas presiones”), Francesco Carril (“The Wishful Thinkers,” “The Romantic Exiles”) and Aura Garrido (“Stockholm,” “The Ministry of Time” ) star. CineBinario, an indie distribution house with a strong line in younger French directors, handles Spanish theatrical distribution, bowing “The Reconquest” in Spain on Sept. 30.
Trueba has said that the film is based “on the feeling caused by this strange familiarity when you reunite with someone who once meant everything to you and suddenly you are tossed into some kind of time vertigo.”
“The Reconquest” is “a delicate and elegant love story suitable for educated audiences all over the world,” said Film Factory founder Vicente Canales.
“The Romantic Exiles” won a special jury award at the 2015 Malaga Spanish Film Festival.
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