Selected – III Edition
Something like happiness
Álvaro Gago studied Filmmaking at the London Film School where he graduated in 2013 with the short film Curricán, which earned him the awards for Best Director at Curtocircuito and Best Film at Cans Film Festival. In 2017 he directed the 2019 Goya-nominated short film Matria, which won him over seventy awards including the 2018 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. That year he edited Trote, Xacio Baño’s first film, which had its world premiere at the 2018 Locarno Film Festival.
Student in an MA Filmmaking from The London Film School, during her years in London she produced several short films. She recently opened her own production company, Ringo Media, and was selected as an Emerging European Producer by MAIA Workshops, nominated by Catalan Films for the Rotterdam Film Lab 2018 and selected for the Berlinale Talents 2019.
Ramona is a woman in her forties who bears her tense and precarious work and family life with difficulty. She crosses paths with Xosé, a man in his sixties mourning the recent death of his wife. Their initially elusive relationship gives way to friendship, in a transit that reinforces Ramona, resituates her in her world and allows her to believe that there might be something new to live for.
The film is inspired by the life of Francisca Iglesias, an anonymous heroine who worked at my grandfather’s house for the last eight years of his life and who is a close friend of mine. We made a record of her daily struggle in my penultimate short film, Matria, where Francisca performed in the lead role. The format’s runtime forced us to focus on just two aspects of her life, leaving out a universe that’s as rich as it is complex and that I would like to continue taking a closer look at in my first feature length film.
We posed the first year for development and the following one to look for support from third parties in national and international programs with the goal of growing and learning, but at the same time, starting to look for partners to accompany us as a national distributor or an international sales agent. The project is currently in Catalan-Galician co-production with Ringo Media and Matriuska Producciones, and we believe in the strength of firmly accompanying the project starting from its inception.
