30/10/2024 - The Galician festival's inaugural pitching meeting presented five feature film projects looking for international co-producers

In its inaugural NEXUS Foro Pitch, the seventh edition of Intersección - A Coruña International Film Festival welcomed five feature film projects looking for international co-producers. Until now, Intersección had mainly offered a space for early-in-development projects to find mentors and recommendations. This practice was continued with the NEXUS session LAB Pitch, while Foro is now the official co-production space. Here are more details about the five projects which took part.

Proto - Álvaro Chior (Spain)

The film centres around four people who cohabit in an industrial building where they read texts, interact with objects and build what seems to be a movie theatre. A sudden meteorological phenomenon causes them to be locked in that space between the projector and the screen. Director Álvaro Chior is a contemporary artist based in Madrid whose work combines filmmaking, writing, sculpture and sound. His installations and performances focus on language and movement. 

The project has already gathered 20% of its budget and is now looking for international partners. Shooting will start in July 2025 and should wrap by the end of that year or early 2026. As for distribution, the production team is hoping to send the film either to the Berlinale, Locarno or Marseilles. 

Monstro - Andrés Goteira (Spain)

In this story, a man arrives at an isolated house in the middle of nature and decides to move in. The solitude of this house gives him comfort, but there are mysterious creatures inhabiting the forest nearby. Driven by his curiosity, he soon comes face to face with them, triggering a necessary personal confrontation. For director Andrés Goteira, fear is a universal feeling, and he wants to explore the tension between fear and identity. The film is a personal journey into the intersection of boredom and isolation. 

The script may have less than 30 pages and no dialogue, but the project has already gained the trust of the Xunta de Galicia, RTVE, Televisión de Galicia, and the team is currently looking into funding from the government of Spain. Monstro is currently in pre-production with Antonio Durán and Iván Marcos as the main actors, and the aim is to get a release in 2026. 

Comando Igualdade - Xiana do Teixeiro (Spain)

Coming from a more educational angle, Comando Igualdade takes place at a high school in Vigo, where a group of students revolutionises their school when they take charge of educating themselves. This Equality Commando asks the question, what would happen if we understood learning as something non-hierarchical, that is not centred around the demands of adults? The film wants to immerse itself in this process by letting the students decide how they want to be portrayed and by offering the same learning process to its audience.  

The film is currently in the development stage, with the help of the Galician region and the support of the city of Vigo. Further steps are to approach the public state televisions of Galicia and Spain and secure the support of the Spanish Film Institute (ICAA). The team is also looking for a foreign company interested in education and gender equality in cinema for an international co-production. 

Todos los ríos del mar - Laura Alhach (Colombia)

Taking a jump across the Atlantic Ocean, this project originates amongst the Tucano Indigenous People of Colombia. Yurupari is their myth and a ritual. Women have been forbidden to be part of it. Only men participate, wearing masks made of women's hair. Yurupari was also one of the most important series in Colombia in the 1980s, directed by a woman, which portrayed different festivals, rituals, and carnivals amidst the armed conflict. The last episode was censored and never released, as it was a very radical representation of people at its time.

Director and Colombia native Laura Alhach is an anthropologist, filmmaker and archivist, who has repeatedly worked on the politics of memory and the threats left over by the conflict. To her, this film is born out of a colonial wound in a country marked by violence, but also by beauty. The censorship at the state archive also takes on a personal note for her, as her great-aunt was such a censor. 

The film has already received a grant from Colombia and the production team has secured the licensing of the archival material, as well as more than 5,000 photos. The film is in an advanced stage of development and the team would now like to explore possibilities of international and national co-productions.

La Koreana - Joana Moya (Spain)

Another historic epoch is explored in La Koreana, dealing with memory, landscape and territory. Director Joana Moya was inspired by her grandmother, who emigrated from Malaga to La Arboleda in the Basque Country at only 18 years of age when her husband started working as a miner in a mountain close to the village. A fiction inspired by a real mountain, Moya aims to focus on the situation of the women in this scenario. The cold and the humidity, the lack of light in the area make her protagonist feel that she is dissolving like the mountain itself. She will have to fight to maintain her memory and identity.

The film is rooted in two disciplines which Moya cares deeply about, namely contemporary dance and geology. Therefore, the mountain will not only serve as a backdrop, but also as a main character of the story. To evoke its voice, the director is working with electromagnetism. Dance sequences will create a physical dialogue between the miners and the mountain.

Moya first developed the project in 2022, at the Residencies for Audiovisual Projects in the Development Phase of the joint call by the Cineteca (Film Archive) and the Centre for Artists in Residence at Matadero Madrid. There is currently a first draft of the script. The final version, as well as casting and location scouting, are planned for 2025. The project is now looking for national and international co-production partners. By 2026, the financing should be complete, and the shooting should commence later that year.