In what remains the Spanish movie trade’s greatest occasion of 2024, final January, pay TV Movistar Plus+, behind premium collection like “A Good Life” and “The Plague,” summoned native press to unveil its greatest strategic transfer for the previous few years.
Accompanying Movistar Plus execs Domingo Corral and Guillermo Farré had been 5 of the good, most profitable and comparatively younger filmmakers in Spain at this time: Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Alberto Rodríguez, Iciar Bolláin, Oliver Laxe and Ana Rujas. Collectively they outlined plans to make occasion auteur motion pictures backed for business launch in Spanish theaters by the promotional muscle of Movistar Plus+.
Six months later, Rodríguez, director of Goya Award winner “Marshland” and 1580s Seville thriller collection “The Plague,” is caught on set by Selection on Spain’s southern seaboard, on a ship simply off Huelva, dwelling to large smoke-belching refineries and beautiful pure parks.
That setting gives “Los Tigres” a much bigger canvas. Nonetheless, Rodríguez maintains the film is a private flip after deep dives into Spanish historical past, catching the nation at instances of change, reminiscent of “Jail 77,” a real occasion jailbreak movie that grew to become the most-watched film on Movistar Plus+ in 2023, outgunning Hollywood blockbusters.
“Los Tigres” stars Antonio de la Torre (“The Countless Trench,” “The Realm,” “Group 7”) as Antonio, an industrial diver who handles the maintenance of submerged pipelines connecting massive oil tankers to Huelva’s land-based refineries.
Clad like underwater astronauts, Antonio and sister Estrella (Barbara Lennie, “Magical Woman,” “The Realm”) face solitude and big dangers at work as Antonio begins to sense that his time is previous, that he’s only one extra diver on the planet’s huge oceans. Pressured to reconnect along with his sister and adapt to a land-based life, Antonio’s life is wrenched aside when he and Estrella discover a cocaine’ stash within the hull of an anchored ship at Huelva’s essential port.
Written with Rodríguez’s career-long co-writer Rafael Cobos (“The Plague”), “Los Tigres” is produced by Movistar Plus+ and co-produced by Kowalski Movies and Feelgood Media in Spain, joined by France’s Le Pacte. The Walt Disney Firm handles Spanish theatrical distribution; Movie Manufacturing unit holds worldwide rights.
“It’s a character-driven characteristic, although Rodríguez’s tales are likely to fold many various layers collectively,” famous Guillermo Farré, head of movie at Movistar Plus+. “I feel his true intention is to recreate the social actuality, together with its complexities, like business diving’s harmful and tough work circumstances.
Taking pictures took place on the Huelva-CEPSA’s petrochemical plant and Huelva’s industrial port amenities, the Unesco protected Odiel River marshland and Alicante’s Ciudad de la Luz movie studios. Wrapping July 5, manufacturing has concerned oil tankers and tugs, ships and divers for open sea underwater scenes.
“The distinctive aspect to Movistar’s movie Originals is their guess on authors, taking care of them and aiming to make one of the best options potential,” defined Kowalski Movies producer Koldo Zuazua. “The work all of us do collectively is de facto constructive, and we’re all on the identical web page by way of creativity and intentions.”
Selection spoke with Rodríguez on set:
What’s the core of “Los Tigres”?
It’s a “massive coronary heart” feature with a thriller mechanism, like “Jail 77,” with a focus on relationships between characters, inside and outside the core surroundings.
How did you strategy the change in narrative and the topic of the movie?
We had finished a couple of movies which revisited Spain’s latest historical past. However, we need to be happy and liberated from this weight of historical past. We aimed for an open characteristic. We talked about this once we completed “Jail” – making a private movie. When all is alleged and finished, what pursues us most are feelings. We prioritize our characters above all.
Nature appears to be like key within the movie. How did you strategy it?
It’s like the place we’re sitting. You’ve the petrochemical space over there, and that’s Saltes Island, an islet within the Huelva River trade and a pure paradise. There are two shores: Man and nature.
“Los Tigres” appears to be like like a part of a push by Movistar Plus+ to push author second hand movies. How does that have an effect on you?
Now we have achieved an amazing steadiness with quite a lot of freedom, which is de facto necessary. They’re betting on movies by auteurs, which can be what marks them aside from different platforms. This movie may simply have turned into formulaic, but it’s surely fairly removed from that, given it’s not a thriller. Its characters carry extra weight than the remainder of the context.
How has working underwater affected your acting career?
They each needed to work out and put together loads. Simply their head gear can weigh as much as 15 kilograms. Bodily, it’s onerous for them. However Antonio de la Torre enjoys that loads. He has been diving across the island to arrange. Barbara Lennie enjoys it, too, as a result of she loves these bodily adjustments.
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