04/02/2013 - Shooting comes to end of its first week for the Andalusian director Manuel Martín Cuenca’s fourth feature length film – a Spanish, Romanian, Russian and French coproduction

Andalusian director Manuel Martín Cuenca started shooting last January 28 for his fourth feature film, Caníbal. Filming will take place over eight weeks in Granada and other locations across the province, including Sierra Nevada and the Motril coast.

The story of Caníbal, written by the director together with Hernández, has as main character Carlos (Antonio de la Torre), Granada’s most prestigious tailor, a respectable man, whose life consists of working and eating. But not just anything: he feeds himself with nameless women, with whom he has no emotional connection. Everything changes when he meets young Romanian Nina (Olimpia Melinte), who is desperately looking for her twin sister Alexandra, who disappeared just a few days before.

According to the director, his new piece of work is “the story of a crime containing a great love story.” The director also clarified the importance of location choice as Granada, “a fascinating city which has rarely been used in cinema to tell contemporary stories.” He also wanted to underline the ties between his film and Andalusia, “my intention is to build a profoundly Andalusian cinema, not only filled with Andalusians, but also capable of inventing new stories through the enormous cultural universe that is our land.”

Caníbal’s international itinerary (which is a La Loma Blanca production) started in January 2012 with Cinemart from Rotterdam participating in its coproduction. During this time, production company Mod Producciones joined the production process. The following May, it was selected to participate in the well-known Atelier of the Cannes Cinefondation (read the news story), which enabled Libra Films, Russian CTB Film Company LTD and French Luminor to come on board. The film also received financing from Eurimages (€250,000), ICAA (€395,277), from the Media programme and from Ibermedia.

Barcelona-based Film Factory Entertainment will be taking care of international sales.  

(Translated from Spanish)