VARIETY
Feb 7, 2021
By Emilio Mayorga
Boutique German sales agent Patra Spanou Film has pounced on “Destello Bravío,” acquiring international sales rights to the feature debut of Spain’s Ainhoa Rodríguez’s film, which screened this week in main competition at the Rotterdam Film Festival.
“Destello Bravío” is produced by Rodríguez’s Tentación Cabiria, based out of Extremadura in southwest Spain, in co-production with Eddie Saeta, the Barcelona-based company of Luis Miñarro, one of Spain’s most internationally renowned arthouse producer-directors whose credits include 2011 Rotterdam Tiger Award winner “Finisterrae,” directed by Sergio Caballero, and the Miñarro-directed “Stella Cadente,” which world premiered at Rotterdam in 2014.
“Destello Bravío” depicts a group of mainly female characters in a small country town in southwest Spain. The feature captures the sentiments of these women, as the town is drained of its population, and their intense desire for liberating experiences.
“I was impressed by the skills of the director; in every single frame of her film you can see that she knows exactly what she wants in both form and content,” Spanou told Variety, adding that “the representation of this kind of community can be applied to every rural area of the world. This, along with the director’s special approach to gender issues, makes the film interesting for audiences around the world.”
Featuring a non-professional cast and making use of often fixed-camera set ups and a calculated mise-en-scène, the composed feature is laced with touches of suspense, rural surrealism, social realism and Almodovar-style humor.
“This is a very independent film which is close to our hearts and a long time in the works, so we thought that its international sales should be carried out by an independent agent who will treat the film as her most important title, creating a close and trusting relationship with me and setting reasonable conditions,” Rodríguez told Variety.
Spanou has managed sales of fiction and documentary titles for more than 15 years. Her catalog includes films such as Cristiane Oliviera’s “The First Death of Joana,” Eugen Jebeleanu’s “Poppy Field,” and from Spain, Xacio Baño’s “Trot” and Elena Martín’s “Júlia Ist.”
Announced to Variety, Rodriguez’s next project will be a kind of “a Western set in ‘80s Spain depicting the universe of child fantasy that surrounded me as a girl,” the director said.
