“Lóngquán: The Dragon’s Spring,” a hybrid doc-fiction feature marking the feature debut of Catalan Adrià Guxens, walked off with the work-in-progress award at Locarno Pro’s inaugural Spanish Previews.
The plaudit consists in a €10,000 ($11,700) in-kind award in post-production services granted by Barcelona’s Antaviana. The award goes to a film which seeks to address a near absence in Spanish cinema, movies entering characters of multi-cultural origins.
A fiction film with at times a documentary feel and at others suggesting the careful directorial control of a fiction film, moving between realism and fantasy, past and present, the excerpts of “Lóngquán” shown at Locarno climaxed in one of the emotional high points of the Previews, hushing a Locarno Rialto Cinema audience, thanks in part to what looks like a delicate, nuanced performance by Catalan pro actor Junyi Sun.
“Lóngquán: The Dragon’s Spring” “marks the beginning of the promising careers of Adrià Guxens and Junyi Sun,” said producer Anna Moragriega at Pausa Dramática, which produces alongside La Charito Films (“The Coffee Table”).
“While countries like France or the U.S. have been telling stories about people from diverse backgrounds for years, in Spain we still resist placing them at the center of our narratives — even though our society has been plural for a long time now,” Guxens added.
“Making this film in Spain is nothing short of a miracle,” Moragriega tells Variety. In its focus, it is a pioneering addition to the rich tradition of Catalan doc-features, much driven by the Pompeu Fabra U.
In other ways, Locarno’s far-ranging inaugural Spanish Previews speak large of cinema now in Spain, in artistic and industrial terms.
“The Mantises,” Didac Gimeno’s supernatural coming of age thriller, drinks deep at the well of Spain’s grand tradition of auteur genre cinema,
Rural romantic dramedy “Cowgirl” taps into Spain’s vibrant pan-regional co-production, here exploiting a Valencia-Catalonia axis. It is lead produced by Lorena Torres at The Fly Hunter, and co-produced by Productions Quart and Aguacate & Calibrate with backing from national, Valencia and Catalan pubcaster – RTVE, A Punt and 3Cat.
Produced by Charli Bujosa, selected for Locarno’s 2024 Match Me!, “La Carn” also bears testimony to national co-production, and a generation of producers pushing queer cinema, but as a broad audience offer, not niche entertainment.
A closer look at the five Spanish Previews titles:
“La Carn,” (Joan Portel, Spain)
Inspired by a Porcel theater performance with the film plumbing its creation, presenting the piece itself and also adding fictional elements, “needed to understand the performance and its creator’s character,” Porcel told Variety. The first feature really lead produced by Mansalva Films, noted its founder Charli Bujosa, at Locarno’s Match Me! last year with the notable “The Shepherdess.”
“Cowgirl,” (Cristina Fernández Pintado, Miguel Lloren, Spain)
A second chance, later life rural romantic dramedy set in stunning countryside. Empar, 67, a woman farmer with a fine line in mordant humor – “Is your family close by?” a new young helper asks. “Yes, in the cemetery,” she answers – needs a calf from her cow to save her farm. She gets aid from an old flame, rekindling decade old emotions. A possible breakout, re-teaming Fernández Pintado and Lloren, helmers of “Things to Do Before You Die.”
“Lóngquán: The Dragon Spring,” (Adrià Guxens, Spain)
In the New Year of the Dragon, Junyi, a young Catalan of Chinese descent, gets a call from his mom in China, saying his 94 year-old grandmother has suddenly fallen ill and wants to see him. Junyi’s trip to Lóngquán will transform his sense of roots and identity. “A rare gem in both Catalan and Spanish cinema – a film about cultural identity and the search for one’s roots, exploring themes of identity, memory and belonging,” says producer Anna Moragriega.
“The Mantises,” (“Las Mantises,” Didac Gimeno, Spain, Argentina)
Part of a new wave of fantasy cinema that embraces the visual and the symbolic as its primary narrative language, notes Gimeno. Shot on Super 16mm, “The Mantises” turns on Aitana, 14, who, after her mother’s death, spends the summer at her uncle’s house whose nearby forest and animals are a portal to the afterlife. Produced by Spain’s MGC and Argentina’s Motoneta Cine, a film “about grief, but also daring to explore the occult, the forbidden and the supernatural as a way to heal,” says Gimeno.
“This Body of Mine,” (Afioco Gnecco, Carolina Yuste, Spain)
Produced by Carlo D’Ursi’s upscale production house Potenza Producciones, a doc feature LGBT road trip tale centered on friendship. Rafael, a trans man learning to accept his own body, and Carolina, his unflagging companion, set off to Chile to secure Rafael’s sense of acceptance – his of self and his family’s. Shot with a sense of humor as it unpacks psychological challenges of transsexuality.