Barcelona-based outfit Mediacrest Entertainment SL has struck up a co-production (and distribution) partnership with Madrid’s Wanda Visión to stage Lonely Man, the new film by Gerardo Olivares, for whom this movie is “a highly personal project that came about after my travels around Patagonia and after meeting Don Pardo, who represents those solitary characters who live off the beaten path at the edge of the world, and without whom we would never be able to understand that region. It’s a story about age-old rivalries, about life in one of the most extreme places on the planet and about solitude, but also about friendship.”

It tells the story of Cándido Sandoval, a gaucho who was born 70 years ago in the heart of Patagonia. He lives alone in a shack, cut off from everything. His day-to-day problems may appear straightforward to us, but to him, they are a matter of survival in an extremely hostile environment. His closest neighbour lives 45 minutes away on horseback... However, their lives are marked by old territorial disputes. An unexpected form of solidarity will arise between them both when the cruel winter leaves one of them at death’s door.

“We are living at a time when everything is so mainstream, commercial and totally dictated by algorithms. Lonely Man is a small story about real-life characters, with which we hope to lend credibility and prestige to the Mediacrest brand,” sums up Olivares, the director and head of Documentaries at the company, himself a hardened traveller who has been all the way around the globe many times. Standing out among his fictional works are Among Wolves [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], Brothers of the Wind [+lire aussi :
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making of
fiche film], El faro de las orcas [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (which was also shot in Argentina) and his most recent release, 4 latas [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], which dates from 2019.

Meanwhile, Winnie Baert, head of Fiction Production at Mediacrest, states, “This project drifts between fiction and documentary, recounting a simple, straightforward and emotional story in the same vein as the great film classics that have weaved in between these two worlds. Gerardo Olivares is an expert in handling and crossing between both genres.” The involvement of Wanda Visión represents a huge boost for the production of Lonely Man, as, in his words, it’s “a natural partner for a project of this type, because of the relationship it has with Gerardo (with whom it has worked regularly), its lengthy career in the domain of co-productions and its interest in the documentary genre in the most classical sense of the word”.

Baert can boast myriad years of experience in the audiovisual sector, on both the national and the international level: he has worked as a delegate producer on titles of the likes of The Oxford Murders [+lire aussi :
critique
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interview : Álex de la Iglesia
interview : Gerardo Herrero et Mariela…
fiche film] and The Last Circus [+lire aussi :
critique
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interview : Álex de la Iglesia
fiche film], both directed by Álex de la Iglesia; May God Save Us [+lire aussi :
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interview : Rodrigo Sorogoyen
fiche film] and The Realm [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Rodrigo Sorogoyen
interview : Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Isabel …
fiche film], both by Rodrigo Sorogoyen; and Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote [+lire aussi :
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interview : Terry Gilliam
fiche film].