Rodrigo Soroguín, director of As Bestas, Riot Police, and Oscar-nominated Madre brings to international market La Guerra, a six-part drama that offers a new vision of the Spanish Civil War that looks like one of the biggest Spanish series ever.
Sorogoyen will direct all six episodes. Isabel Peña, Sorogoyen, and Eduardo Villanueva, the “Riot Police” writing team, have a fairly definitive three-episode version with the rest in preliminary stage.
“La Guerra” was originally created in Movistar Plus +. In an amicable settlement — Sorogoyen went on to direct and promote an episode of Movistar+’s original “Offworld” last week in San Sebastián — after Movistar Plus+ pulled out of the series, Sorogoyen and Villanueva’s Madrid-based company, Caballo Films, reclaimed the rights.
The series is believed to arouse great interest with potential partners in Spain. Villanueva unveiled “La Guerra” at the Iberseries & Platino Industria funding forum, and now aims to attract overseas production partners to tie up the completion funding and position the series firmly in the international market. diverse.
“La Guaira” catches Soroguín, Pina and Villanueva in good time. At the Cannes premiere, “The Beasts” (“As Bestas”), a contemporary Spanish western thriller starring Marina Vois and Denis Menochet, garnered 310,000 entries in France and won the San Sebastian Audience Award for Best European Film on Friday. . Movistar Plus + collective series “Offword” (“Apagon”), whose first episode was written, “Denial” by Peña and directed by Sorogoyen, was also a hit in San Sebastian. “Riot Police,” a thriller that spoke of “important themes relevant to Spain’s present – immigration, corruption, and masculinity – remains one of the most-watched series of all time on Movistar Plus.
Caballo Films is the producer of nearly all of Sorogoyen’s films, including “The Beasts”, “Madre”, “May God Save Us” and “Madre” as well as “Riot Police” and the movie anthology “En Casa” for HBO Max. Caballo scored last week at the San Sebastian World Festival premiere of “The Road,” an original Atresplayer Premium and artistically daring take on the Bakalao nightclub scene in Spain.
In “La Guerra,” Soroguín aims for an approach similar to “riot police,” in his words, “making a novel that is tense and addictive but also relevant.”
Soroguín, a pioneer in university history, laments that the Spanish Civil War was not taught in schools. Given that, being able to use a 300-minute series “wasn’t just awesome, it was a commitment in a way,” he said. He added, “The people who know their history are healthier, freer and more modern.” Moreover, the Civil War is still “very lively”.
It will not portray the popular “La Guerra”, but will feature unknown characters as the central characters. “Historical facts will provide the context and insights that feed each episode, but what matters to us are the stories of those who lived through the war,” Soroguin said.
The series will “revolutionize the classic depictions of the Civil War, escaping from the good or bad portrayal of characters. We won’t just have bloody executioners and innocent victims. The imagination is more compelling when it explores the gray areas of the characters, and it’s so much like reality.”
Rebelling many well-established perceptions of the Civil War, the series’ murals will be as broad as possible, organized around six independent episodes that explore a different struggle in the six corners of Spain. The series will also adopt “the latest perspectives possible,” Soroguin said, following a Rif mountain shepherd who fights in Spain for cheap and vague promises of a future there, when Moroccan soldiers are usually written off as savages, he said.
It seems that another episode was set against the backdrop of the little-known Battle of Teruel, in the winter of 1937, the coldest in 50 years, and narrates the “personal revenge of some Republican soldiers.”
Each story will have a direct relationship to the present. As a lover of hyperrealism, Sorogwin said he is not interested in “designed images”: “I want the audience to feel that the characters are being photographed by someone who has a camera in that particular place at the time.” .
“The Spanish Civil War not only forever determined the future of Spain, but had a decisive impact on the rest of the international community,” said writer and producer Villanueva, who produced “La Guerra” for Caballo Films.
So, he said, “La Guerra” is not just a Spanish series. “The human struggles of their protagonists are universal. And unfortunately, temporarily: we see them recur over and over again in current wars.”
Villanueva added that “La Guaira” is the most ambitious project for Sorogoyen and Caballo Films, “ambitious in scale, relevance, ramifications and distribution strategy”.
One example of scale: Villanueva said the series will be filmed in three blocks over the course of an entire year to capture distinct seasons in various locations in Spain.
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