Film Tank, Indigo Film Close Mexican-Italian Co-production on Gaz Alazraki’s ‘Almost Paradise’ at Rome’s Mia
Mexico’s Film Tank has signed with Italy’s Indigo Film to co-produce “Casi el paraiso“ (Almost Paradise), the return to filmmaking of Gaz Alazraki, co-creator of Netflix series “Club de Cuervos,” which will be distributed in all the American continent by 20th Century Fox.
Indigo Films’ credits include Paolo Sorrentino’s “This Must Be the Place” and the Academy Award-winning “The Great Beauty,” Film Tank’s the Golden Globe-nominated “The Maid” and immigration dramedy “Norteado.”
In a powerful combination that is increasingly common on the top-of-their-class movie projects coming out of Latin America, Fox International Pictures, U.S.-based Ivanhoe Pictures and Mexico’s Imcine film institute will also produce “Almost Paradise.”
Announced Sunday out of Rome’s Mia Cinema Co-Production Market – where a Sunday morning press conference confirmed that Italy would be joining Ibermedia, the most powerful pan-regional film-TV aid program for Latin America, Spain and Portugal – the new co-production deal sees Indigo boarding the second feature by Alazraki. His debut, riches-to-rags comedy “The Noble Family,” grossed $26.25 million in Mexico in 2012, establishing him from the get-go as a filmmaker with a broad audience sense and ability to touch a social nerve.
Written by Edgar San Juan, a partner at Film Tank, “Almost Paradise” is based on Mexico’s first best-seller, penned by Luis Spota, the enfant terrible of Mexican journalism, and a prolific and highly popular social satirist. Set in the 1950s, “Almost Paradise” turns on an Italian con-man who flees to Mexico City, poses as an Italian prince and dazzles Mexico’s high society – especially its political class born out of the Mexican Revolution but avid for old world aristocracy to the point of paying for his upkeep or promising a daughter in marriage.
Spota’s novel “mocks deliciously well“ a “Mexican upper-crust’s search for validation from an outside world which is a clear indication of a lack of national identity and pride,” Alazraki said, announcing “Almost Paradise” late last year.
Alazraki also said that there is “a deeper study of an imposter who is shunned by society in Italy but embraced with wide open arms in Mexico probably out of the fact he is blond-ish.”
“Almost Paradise” will shoot on location in Acapulco, Mexico City, Rome, Naples and Capri.
“I am sure that with Indigo Film’s help, “Almost Paradise” the film will be at the height of one of the fundamental novels in Mexican literature,” San Juan said.
Imcine’s investment in “Almost Paradise” will be channeled through its Fidecine film investment initiative. The film is also backed by Italy’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
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