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The Mediapro Studio’s “The 47,” placing star Eduard Fernández is a pole position in the Best Actor Goyas race, is breaking box office records in Spain.

Directed by Marcel Barrena, who already showed in “Mediterráneo: The Law of the Sea” his sense of broad audience appeal on movies engaging social issues, results for “The 47” will do nothing to discourage Tms as it builds its movie output as one of its key growth strategies in a more challenged market environment.

Released Sept. 6 by A Contracorriente Films, Spain’s biggest indie distributor and a national film champion, and largely shot in Catalan, “The 47” became last week the most watched Catalan-language movie in cinema theaters over the last 40 years.

Soon after release, it rocketed to No. 1 in box office charts on Sept. 18, a Spectators Day in Spain when tickets are cheaper, attracting bigger audiences. No other Catalan-language movie has achieved that in the last decade.

Inspired by the simmering one-man rebellion that kicked off a tremendous tide-change in Barcelona, writer-director Marcel Barrena (“Mediterraneo: The Law of the Sea”) and Spain’s The Mediapro Studio have begun filming “The 47.”

Tms has released first look images. The premise centers on social activist bus driver Manolo Vital, played by three-time Goya Award winner Eduardo Fernández (“Smoke & Mirrors”), as he grows increasingly outraged at the abject neglect faced by immigrant communities outside the city’s center, whose neighborhoods, peeled by immigrants from Extremadura and Andalusia, had only just achieved running water.

Stonewalled by the City Council, Vital seizes a bus used on Barcelona’s #47 line and extends its route to Torre Baró in an attempt to prove that the vehicle can safely service the outlying communities in need.

“What the film shows is that this good man tried to convince everyone that it was feasible. The contempt of...

El 47, the latest feature from Spanish production powerhouse Mediapro Studio, is kicking into gear with cameras set to roll on the pic in Barcelona in the coming days.

Directed by Marcel Barrena (Mediterraneo: The Law of the Sea), the pic is billed as a “tribute to the working class and to the men and women who built our cities, not only physically but also culturally.” The pic tells the story of Manolo Vital, a bus driver who helped create modern Barcelona during the city’s 1970s boom. Barrena co-wrote the pic with Alberto Marini (El desconocido).

Synopsis reads: In the 1960s and 70s Spain, rural Barcelona was built, for the most part, by immigrants from Extremadura and Andalusia who, although they had built the neighborhoods with their bare hands, were still not considered part of the city. Their homes didn’t even have running water or electricity. Tired of hearing...

Spain’s The Mediapro Studio is teaming with writer-director Marcel Barrena and Spanish star Eduard Fernández on real-life inspired social film “The 47.”

Scheduled to shoot in Catalan and Spanish June-July in Barcelona, “The 47” is based on the true story of Manolo Vital, a bus driver who, during the city’s expansion in the 1970s, help shape the Barcelona of today.

Produced by Jaume Roures and executive produced by Laura Fernández Espeso, Javier Méndez and Eva Garrido, the film is one of the projects The Mediapro Studio Distribution is presenting for international sales at the current Cannes’ Marché du Film.

Award-winning screenwriter-producer Alberto Marini co-wrote the script alongside Barrena.

Winner of three Goya Awards and a San Sebastian Silver Shell, Fernández plays the central character in the film.

The cast also takes in Clara Segura (“The Sea Inside”), Zoe Bonafonte, Salva Reina (“Con quién viajas”), Aimar Vega (“Prison 77”), Carlos Cuevas...

Top Spanish producer Nostromo Pictures, which is behind Netflix hit “Through My Window,” is partnering with Beta Fiction Spain to launch “Hermano Caballo,” a documentary by Marcel Barrera, director of “Mediterraneo: The Law of the Sea” and “100 Meters.”

“Hermano Caballo” marks the first documentary produced by Nostromo Pictures and also the first handled by Beta Fiction Spain, the Spanish arm of Jan Mojto’s European studio Beta Film, which launched last year.

The documentary focuses on reknowned Catalan wrangler Santi Serra, developer of a natural training technique based on creating bonds with horses and learning through play.

Barrena shows how Serra develops his own language with animals, especially with his horses, managing to communicate with them and establish strong relationships of trust and friendship.

“Hermano” is scheduled for a Spanish release before the summer and, to be announced soon, a festival that will serve as the doc-feature’s launch pad.

Tenerife-based Bendita Film Sales has taken international sales rights to Nely Reguera’s sophomore outing, drama “La voluntaria” (“The Volunteer”), toplining “Broken Embraces,” “Perfect Life” and Piggy” star Carmen Machi, one of the biggest marquee draws in Spain.

World premiering in main competition at this year’s Malaga Festival, “La voluntaria” marks Reguera’s follow-up to her well-received feature 2016 debut, the Bárbara Lennie-starrer “María (And the Others),” which won the best Ibero-American film prize at the Miami Film Festival and earned new director and lead actress nominations at the Spanish Academy Goya Awards.

Barcelona-born Reguera forms part of the new generation of exciting young female Catalan auteurs, alongside Carla Simón (“Alcarràs”), Belén Funes (“The Daughter of the Thief”), Neus Ballús (“The Odd-Job Men”) and Meritxell Colell (“Facing the Wind”).

A Spain-Greece co-production, “La voluntaria” is produced by Adriá Monés at Fasten Films, Bteam Pictures’ Alex Lafuente and Maria Drandaki from Homemade Films.

Pedro Almodovar’s ‘Parallel Mothers’ went home empty-handed.

The Good Boss, directed by Fernando León de Aranoa and starring Javier Bardem, scored big at the 36th edition of the Goyas, the Spanish Academy Awards held on Saturday in Valencia. With a record 20 nominations, it won six wards including best film, best director and screenplay for León de Aranoa and best actor for Javier Bardem.

Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers, nominated for eight awards, left empty handed.

Produced by The Mediapro Studio and Reposado PC, The Good Boss premiered in competition at the San Sebastián Film Festival and went on to...

“Why don’t you come around for dinner?,” Barcelona lifeguard Gerard Casals (Dani Rovira) asks his boss, Oscar Camps (Eduard Fernández), at the beginning of “Mediterráneo: The Law of the Sea.”

“I’ve got other plans,” says Camps. Cut to his sitting on his sofa, eating a warmed-up microwave dinner watching TV on his laptop.

Then Camps catches a news report featuring the horrific images of 3-year-old Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi, his lifeless body lying on a Turkish beach, washed by waves, after the dingy he was in capsized.

Two days later, Oscar and Gerard are sitting on a beach in Lesbos, Greece, looking across at the hulking headlands of Turkey, just seven miles away across a strait that separates Asia from the European Union. “People are dying in the sea; we’re lifeguards,” he says. So begins Camps and Casals’ life mission, which becomes the now celebrated Ngo Open Arms,...

Shortlist also inclued Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers and Marcel Barrena’s Mediterraneo: The Law Of The Sea.

Fernando León de Aranoa’s black comedy The Good Boss, starring Javier Bardem, will represent Spain in the upcoming best international feature film Oscar race.

The Spanish Film Academy selected the film from a shortlist that also included Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers and Marcel Barrena’s Mediterraneo: The Law Of The Sea.

Produced by The Mediapro Studio and Reposado P.C., The Good Boss premiered last month at the San Sebastián Film Festival, reuniting director Aranoa with Bardem 19 years after Mondays In The Sun,...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2022 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2022 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

The 94th Academy Awards will take place on March 27, 2022 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. This is the first time since 2018 that the ceremony will take place in March, having moved to avoid conflicting with the Winter Olympics.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly non-English dialogue...

The Spanish Film Academy has picked Fernando León de Aranoa’s comedy-drama The Good Boss as its entry for the International Oscar race this year.

The film stars Javier Bardem as the scheming owner of a factory that makes scales. It recently premiered at San Sebastian Film Festival, where Deadline sat down with its director and star.

The Good Boss topped a three-strong shortlist that also featured Pedro Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers and Marcel Barrena’s Mediterraneo: The Law Of The Sea.

Separately, Parasite nation South Korea has picked Escape from Mogadishu as its contender this year.

The Yonhap news agency reported today that Kofic, the Korean Film Council, had chosen the action film based on a true story of the life-and-death escape by South and North Korean diplomats during the Somali civil war in the 1990s.

The film has been a box office hit in Korea, attracting 3.1 million audience...

Awards

Spain has selected a high profile trio of films as finalists for the country’s 2021 International Feature Oscar submission.

The favorite, at least at this early stage, is Pedro Almodóvar’s “Madres paralelas” (“Parallel Mothers“), which just saw lead Penelope Cruz take the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. The film, which world premiered at the Italian event, was also a contender for the Golden Lion for best film and the Queer Lion.

Not to be counted out, Fernando León de Aranoa’s “The Good Boss,” starring an almost unrecognizable Javier Bardem, was also selected as a finalist for this year’s honor. Buzz around the film is at a fever pitch in Spain, with positive word of mouth after initial press screenings and its official world premiere set for next week’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

Rounding out the short list is Marcel Barrena...

Italian actor Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) is set to star in “Il ritorno di Casanova,” a drama about what happens to a great lover when he gets older, to be directed by Oscar-winner Gabriele Salvatores (“Mediterraneo”).

Loosely based on Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler‘s novella “Casanova’s Homecoming,” in which the Venetian libertine is having trouble contending with the fact that he’s over 60, “Ritorno di Casanova,” which translates as “Casanova’s Return,” is co-written by Salvatores with “The Great Beauty” screenwriter Umberto Contarello and Sara Mosetti.

Taking his cue from Schnitzler’s use of parallel narratives — Schnitzler’s novella “Dream Story” was the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s non-linear “Eyes Wide Shut” — Salvatores is weaving his new take on the Casanova myth using that technique.

One story strand sees the ageing Casanova hosted by a friend in the Venetian countryside “where one of the guests is a proto-feminist named Marcolina,...