Iberseries & Platino Industria’s sixth edition takes place in Madrid this week, and its jam-packed schedule includes the Thursday, Oct. 1 presentation of six series projects developed by seven screenwriters as part of a collaboration with Fundación SGAE, Spain’s primary collective management organization for intellectual property rights.
The series will be in focus during one of the pitching events that will showcase the projects to producers, buyers, investors and other audiovisual industry professionals. The event is designed as “an opportunity to foster the production, financing and international reach of new fiction projects, while reinforcing one of the objectives of Iberseries & Platino Industria: to facilitate connections between creative talent and the different players in the Ibero-American audiovisual industry,” the event organizers highlight.
Below, THR takes a closer look at the six series projects being pitched in Madrid.
La librera by Virginia Burgos (Seville) and Juan Sánchez (Madrid)
Synopsis: In the early 1990s, a woman opens the first LGBT bookstore in our country. Over several decades, the business becomes a refuge and a political backroom for an entire community. But the day comes when the neighborhood she helped build turns its back on her, leaving her no choice but to ask herself: “What do you do when nobody needs you anymore?”
Takeaways: An LGBT community force and pioneer faces the blues. Do you get the feeling that people will want to find out more about this woman and what is changing for her?
Avión by Miguel Cavadas (Vigo)
Synopsis: Avión is the village that embodies the utopia of Galician emigration: leaving poor and returning rich. In winter, it is yet another example of rural precarity and aging. In summer, it becomes a festival of money, ranchera music and Mexican flags. Its population quadruples, returning to celebrate, enjoy themselves and show off the transatlantic feat. A microcosm that is neither here nor there, but the coexistence of two worlds that have little or nothing to do with one another: community and individualism, past and present, Galicia’s lowest pensions and Mexico’s greatest fortunes. What happens when those two worlds collide?
Takeaways: Don’t expect a theme song like “Sur le Pont d’Avión (Avignon)” for this one – the show sounds much darker and more like a social clash drama that moves you to take a closer look at Galicia.
El capricho by Alberto Grondona
Synopsis: El capricho is a satirical historical comedy about three women vying for power at the 18th-century Spanish court: Queen María Luisa of Parma, the charismatic Duchess of Alba and the enlightened Duchess of Osuna. Their battles for influence, image and desire, in a Spain on the brink of collapse, are observed and narrated with fierce irony by Francisco de Goya, an uneasy witness who turns palace intrigue into a surprisingly contemporary mirror.
Takeaways: A female-led comedic Game of Thrones with Spanish fire and twists will surely turn heads – even if it may remind viewers of the end times.
Teléfonos fijos by Ángel Mirou
Synopsis: In the modest Recalde neighborhood of Bilbao, landline phones ring in the early hours, waking those who still have them installed in their homes. When they pick up, residents hear the voices of relatives, friends or acquaintances. The callers have only one thing in common: they are dead. Whether the calls are proof that something exists after death or an elaborate fraud based on cutting-edge technology, the lives of those involved will never be the same again.
Takeaways: I hear dead people. But in the age of tech scams and AI, can we trust my ears – or your eyes, for that matter!?
La edad menor by Roberto Osa
Synopsis: In a dystopian Madrid where children become the legal guardians of their parents, María confronts the system when her mother is admitted to La edad menor, an irreversible process of infantilization. While her brother is torn between his sister and power, a devastating secret will reveal that neither resistance nor sacrifice is enough to stop oblivion.
Takeaways: Power to the kids! You may look at politicians in your country and think this could actually work. But let’s be honest: there’s something that sounds worrisome, even sinister, about this synopsis. We’ll have to see what’s actually going on here.
Trueque by Pedro Pablo Picazo
Synopsis: Three families who are very close friends struggle daily with the teenagers at home. Each family has solutions for the others’ children. What if they swap them? What could possibly go wrong?
Takeaways: Forget Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! Here comes Honey, I Swapped the Kids.
Read the full article here
