SAN SEBASTIAN — Beta Fiction Spain, the distributor of the opening and closing films at this year’s San Sebastian Festival, Audrey Diwan’s “Emmanuelle” and John Crowley’s “We Live in Time,” has tapped Arantxa Echevarría to direct its banner Spanish feature, “Dolores.”
Echeverría has already helmed for Beta Fiction “La Infiltrada,” about a police infiltrator in Basque terrorist org ETA, which bows Oct. 11 starring Luis Tosar and Carolina Yuste.
“Dolores,” an upcoming fiction film portrait of Dolores Ibarruri, La Pasionaria, a worldwide icon of the workers’ movement and struggle against fascism, was originally announced in 2022 when Beta Fiction Spain launched.
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Breaking out with Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title “Carmen & Lola,” Echevarría’s “Chinas” scored four Spanish Academy Goya Award nominations this year.
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The screenplay for “Dolores” is penned by two of Spain’s foremost film-TV scribes, Alejandro Hernández, co-writer of Alejandro Amenábar’s “While at War,” and Michel Gaztambide, a writer on Julio Medem’s milestone 1992 debut “Cows,” and Freddy Highmore heist thriller “The Vault,” the second highest-grossing Spanish movie of 2021.
“Arantxa is Basque, like Dolores Ibarruri. She has a mainstream reach but an auteurist vision. She is perfect for the film,” Beta Fiction CEO Mercedes Gamero told Variety in the run-up to this year’s San Sebastián Festival, which unspools Sept.20-28.
The announcement of Echevarría’s attachment comes as Beta Fiction Spain is honing a 2025 Spanish production slate which looks set to enrol some of the biggest stars, directors and writers in Spain.
Having released Beta Fiction hit comedy “La Familia Benetón,” which grossed €4.0 million ($4.5 million) in Spain, and “The Count of Monte Cristo” ($1.8 million), the Madrid-based production-distribution house, part of pan-European independent powerhouse Beta Film, also had three titles at Toronto: “We Live in Time,” Nick Hamm’s action drama “William Tell” and romantic epic “On Sweet Horses, starring Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones.
With our acquired titles, we’re at a current sweet spot. We are realising the strategies we had in mind when launching Beta Fiction Spain,” Gamero told Variety.
Yet as Spain’s box office still battles to regain pre-pandemic levels and comedy is no longer necessarily a recipe for box office success, Beta Fiction is looking to unlock success by a combination of strategies.
One is selectivity. “We only acquire six films a year, given our lineup is 50% made up of our Spanish productions,” said Gamero.
Another, naturally enough, is talent.
Of Spanish releases, Beta Fiction will open on Oct. 31 “Escape,” from another auteur, Rodrigo Cortés (“Buried,” “Love Gets a Room”), starring Mario Casas (“The Innocent”) and Anna Castillo (“Nowhere,” “A Perfect Story”).
Both “Dolores” and “”Escape” are drama thrillers. “There’s an excess of comedies, and many the same kind, which is sparking audience burn-out,” said Gamero.
“If comedies do work, they generally don’t work as well as before. The success of ‘The 47’ or last year’s ‘The Teacher Who Promised the Sea’ suggests there’s a public open to other kinds of stories in the Spanish cinema,” she added. “When you go to international markets, you can see that, the films that are based on true events, biopics are working very well. Audiences want to connect with unknown stories about real people, you just have to look at the number of biopics being made in Hollywood.”
Not by chance, “Infiltrada,” produced with Bowfinger Int’l Pictures, and hitting theaters on Oct. 11, is inspired a true story, following a 20-year old policewoman, known only by her alias, Aránzazu Berradre Marín, who managed to embed herself with members of the terrorist group, even sharing living quarters with them.
Beta Fiction’s production slate is also markedly eclectic.
Upcoming titles take in:
*Teen romance and identity drama “Sigue Mi Voz,” adapting “Through My Window” Wattpad author Ariana Godoy’s most personal tale to date, about a young woman’s search, after mental health crisis, for love and self-acceptance. Berta Castañé and Jae Woo star; Inés Pintor y Pablo Santidrián direct a title set for release in Feb. 2025.
*“Cronos,” shooting from September 2025, directed by Fernando González Molina, and produced by Nostromo Pictures, is set in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 Ramblas Barcelona terrorist attack, catching turns a race against the clock by Spanish and European security forces, battle to close down the cell which perpetrated the attack, before it commits further outrages. Alberto Marini is writing the screenplay from an original idea by Arturo Lezcano and Nacho Carretero. “Cronos” also turns on how the attack affected the lives of people in Barcelona and all of Catalonia, Gamero noted.
*Set to shoot in March, “Coartada S.L.” A comedy, yes, but remaking Philippe Lacheau’s frenzied French gross-out film franchise which has cumed over 8 million tickets in France. Curro Velázquez (“Brain Drain”) is penning the Spanish adaptation.
“We like to ring our options,” Gamero said. “So we have a biopic of probably the most important Spanish woman of the 20th century, a true-facts based thriller and the remake of a hit French comedy.” Vital to Beta Fiction Spain’s success, she added, has been the support of public broadcaster TVE, Atresmedia, Movistar Plus+ and Prime Video in Spain, which have acquired Beta Fiction Spain titles since the beginning. “Without the support of Atresmedia and Movistar Plus+, for example, we wouldn’t have been able to make ?Infiltrada,’” she said. TVE acquired “Cronos” last week.
Belonging to Beta has large pluses, Gamero said. Beta Fiction Spain “talks a lot, exchanging market intelligence” with Beta Cinema, Beta’s Germany-based film sales and production arm, though neither is obliged to buy or co-produce each other’s titles.
“To have the financial support of a big group always gives you security, and gives security to the market,” Gamero observed. “Also, Beta is highly prestigious. We’re very proud to be able to contribute and form part of this prestige.”
