Underscoring its growing ambitions in features, MoreThan Films has secured the international sales rights for “Muyeres,” a Spanish film directed by Marta Lallana, which won over theweekend at the Shanghai International Film Festival its jury Grand Prix and best cinematography plaudit for Toni Vidal.
MoreThan Films has shared “Muyeres”’ international trailer in exclusivity withPvNew.
“Muyeres” is a hybrid documentary telling a story of Carmina and Irene, the last guardians of an oral folk tradition on the brink of extinction, set in the northern Spanish region of Asturias.
A musician, played by the film’s composer Raül Refree, embarks on a journey of the region; listening back to recordings of the folk songs he’s found. Blurring fact with fiction the recordings are woven into the mix of Refree’s soundtrack for the film. It is a film that captures the faltering memory of a tradition, of the seamless quality of community through song, sickle, and soil. A way of being that existed for centuries. A tradition where the seasons meant lots, and the harvest was the lifeblood of a place’s soul.
“We were very impressed with Marta Lallana’s ability to mix historical elements and real characters with a fictional narrative,” said Lidia Damatto, co-founder of MoreThan Films, who along with her fellow founders Emma Caviezel and Querault Pns Serra,were “unanimous,” in their decision to take on the film.
“The film touches upon prevalent themes of memory and cultural inheritance that are universal and can be translated across different territories around the world,” Damatto continued.
It adds to MoreThan Film’s roster of full length features having started out with shorts, a strategy born out from their wish to “work with directors who are also starting out so we can help them really broaden the reach of short films,” Damatto toldPvNew.
This approach of getting attached to talented early career filmmakers early should bode well.
Lallana, is a native of Zaragoza, Spain, and graduate of the Arts School of Zaragoza and Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University. Her debut feature, “Ojos Negros,” took home the Biznaga de Plata at the Malaga Film Festival in 2019. Lallana’s perspective combines her visual arts background in photography with film. This eye for a still is front and centre in “Muyeres,” combining precise framing in textured black and white of rural, pastoral Asturias, with intimate interiors of the elder women housebound with age, but full of memory.
Reflecting on her happiness at being selected for Shanghai, Lallana said: “I feel that there is a certain poetry in the fact that the portrait of something that is about to disappear, unknown in most of my own country, is interesting and moving in such a distant place with a culture so different from mine. It is very exciting to think how something so concrete and unassuming has universal value and is able to cross borders and connect us all.”
“Muyeres” is produced by Oriol Maymo – whose credits include the “REC” horror franchise – through the Catalan production company Corte y Confección de Películas, behind Canneseries double winner “Perfect Life” and another high-profile Movistar Plus+ series, “The Invisible Line.”
