On 5 October, filming kicked off in Madrid (the shoot is scheduled to continue in November in Santiago, Chile) on El malentendido (lit. "The Misunderstanding"), the new film by Álex de la Iglesia. The Spanish director, winner of the Goya Award for Best Director for The Day of the Beast (1995) and of the Silver Lion for Best Direction and the Best Screenplay Award at Venice for The Last Circus, also has La cuidadora (see the news) and Crappy Birthday to You, an Argentinian Netflix production that he shot in January in Buenos Aires, awaiting release.

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Written by de la Iglesia and Eugenio Lasarte (who previously collaborated with the director on the 2008 series Plutón B.R.B. Nero), El malentendido is, according to its creators, a madcap comedy that sets out to talk about the meaninglessness of life through the most ruthless brand of farce. It's about how hard it is to survive in a world where everything goes wrong and about how the most momentous decisions are taken by individuals who are detached from reality.

The film boasts an ensemble cast, which is commonplace in de la Iglesia’s filmography (we only need recall, for instance, Common Wealth [2000], The Bar or Perfect Strangers). This time, it comprises Mona Martínez (seen this year in Narciso and La bola negra), Antonio Resines (a Goya Award winner for Lucky Star and seen recently in The Dinner), Benjamín Vicuña (The Memory of Water), Blanca Suárez (recently in Hidden Murder), Hugo Silva (appearing this year in A Sucker's Born Every Minute), Óscar Casas (Idols), Fernando Tejero (a Goya winner for Football Days, recently in The Captive), Carlos Areces (in this year's Torrente presidente) and Arturo Valls (recently in Pet Peeves). Rounding off the hefty cast of this feature are María Barranco (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a Goya winner for The Ages of Lulu), Brays Efe (the series Paquita Salas, The Fantastic Golem Affairs), Miguel Rellán (a Goya winner for Dear Nanny, recently in The Captive and La luz), Pepón Nieto (recently in the series Smiley, Rage and Superstar), Andrés Lima, Manuel Tallafé, Ismael Fritschi, Jaime Ordóñez, Enrique Villén, Aníbal Gómez, Tomás Pozzi and El Gran Wyoming.

The action unfolds in early-20th-century Europe, a powder keg on the verge of exploding. Litovenia and Stalovaquia, two small states with an age-old rivalry, face off unexpectedly at the Assembly of Nations: Field Marshal Stroheim leaves the chamber noticeably offended. He thinks he has been called gordo, or fat, because of an interpretation error. The Stalovak high command is forced to make amends. The man entrusted with this delicate mission will be Maurice Morgens, the foreign minister who, through an unforgivable mistake, instead of sending Stroheim the official letter of apology, sends him a scented love letter intended for his beloved Lulú, brimming with bold and shameless insinuations. Stroheim flies into a rage and declares war - a cruel and devastating conflict ensues, during which nothing will go as planned.

El malentendido is a Spanish-Chilean co-production staged by Álex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang for the companies Pokeepsie Films (Banijay Iberia), El Malentendido AIE and Pokeepsietxea, by Fabiola Velázquez, of Agave Azul Producciones, and by Pablo Díaz del Río, of Río Estudios, with the involvement of RTVE and Movistar Plus, plus funding from the ICAA. Its international sales are handled by Film Factory Entertainment, and its Spanish distribution will be overseen by Beta Fiction Spain.