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The 12th edition of the Spanish festival runs October 18-24

Isabel Coixet’s Un Amor will open the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival while Lone Scherfig’s The Movie Teller will close the 12th edition of the Palma event.

Coixet will also receive the festival’s 2023 vision award. The Spanish filmmaker and her cast of Laia Costa, Hovik Keuchkerian and Hugo Silva, are expected to attend.

Un Amor is based on Sara Mesa’s novel and explores a complicated sexual relationship between a young woman and her older neighbour. It will world premiere at San Sebastian before screening at the UK’s Raindance Film Festival.

Movies about movies tend to be as sentimental as Cinema Paradiso, the all-time tearjerker in the genre, or as caustic as the recent Babylon. But Lone Scherfig finds a fine balance between love of movies and the harsh wider world in The Movie Teller, a beautifully made coming-of-age film about Maria Margarita, who acts out the Hollywood movies she has seen at the local cinema in her small mining town. Set in the Chilean desert in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the drama benefits greatly from the sure hand and clear eye Scherfig has brought to her best films, other period pieces including An Education (2009) and Their Finest (2016). All that can’t quite make up for the rocky screenplay, though.

The story is adapted from the Chilean writer Hernan Rivera Letelier’s 2009 novel. The first version of the screenplay was tackled years ago by the Brazilian director Walter Salles,...

Last year, as movies conceived and shot during the Covid-19 pandemic began to be released, we saw a sudden influx of films rejoicing in the act of moviemaking and movie-watching. From Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” to Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon,” from Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light” to the Indian Oscar entry “Last Film Show,” a surprising number of films bred during pandemic isolation were movies about movies.

And a year later, during the final days of the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, another movie that belongs in that company had its world premiere. “The Movie Teller,” a Spanish-language film set in Chile and made by a Danish director with a cast whose biggest names are known for French and German movies, puts an international spin on the love of movies and embraces the art of storytelling in a way that is at times profoundly moving.

The film is a mixture of genres,...

When I was in college cinema courses I made a Super 8 film called Movie Girl. It was a Hollywood-set love letter to movies centered on a Musso & Frank waitress who put herself dreamily into the plots of classic films. It won an award there but was the highlight of the directing career I never had. However, I have always been partial to filmmakers who put their own early film-going experience and passion into their careers now. You may have heard of them: Kenneth Branagh won an Oscar for doing just that in Belfast. Steven Spielberg got several nominations last year for his very personal The Fabelmans. Woody Allen had his own charming take in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Peter Bogdanovich made a lasting impression with 1971’s The Last Picture Show, as did Giuseppe Tornatore with his Oscar winner Cinema Paradiso.

It is a combination of the latter two especially...

In a groundbreaking move, Constanza Arena, the former executive director of CinemaChile, has established Agencia La Luz, an agency and project incubator that will represent in international markets many of Chile’s foremost writing, directing and acting talents.

Many writers are connected to Chile’s fast-growing premium drama/audio scene. Julio Rojas, one Agencia La Luz client, created and wrote “Case 63,” Spotify’s most-listened-to scripted original podcast in Latin America, with an English-language version I the works starring Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac, and co-wrote Pablo Fendrik’s Latino sci-fi series ‘The Shelter,’ from Starzplay, Pantaya, Fabula, Fremantle.

Enrique Videla and Paula del Fierro co-wrote Lucia Puenzo’s “La Jauría” for Fabula and Fremantle, while Videla, one of Chile’s biggest go-to scribes, co-wrote “Dignity” for Germany’s Joyn, “42 Days of Darkness” for Fabula and Netflix, “The Shelter” and “The Cliff” for The Mediapro Studio.

Agencia La Luz’s director...

The Spanish-language film is in production in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

UK sales outfit Embankment has unveiled a first look at Lone Scherfig’s The Movie Teller.

Screen can exclusively reveal the image, which features newcomer Alondra Valenzuela with Bérénice Bejo and Antonio de la Torre.

The Spanish-language film is set in a 1960s mining community in Chile’s Atacama Desert, where it is in production. It is based on a novel by Hernán Rivera Letelier, La Contadora De Películas, about a woman who inspires a passion for cinema in her daughter. In a town where families are unable to afford tickets to the cinema,...