Audiovisual From Spain

In an increasingly interconnected world that knows no boundaries, it’s easier to access the talent from places far away from your own. In recent years, especially in the Western world, we’ve seen how the local audiovisual industries and Hollywood have had to share more and more space with other countries like India (with the irruption of Bollywood) or South Korea (with the global phenomenon of the so-called K-dramas). For the audience it’s great to have a wider array of possibilities and get to know the stories told in other places. And that’s where the Spain, Where Talent Ignites initiative comes to play.

You probably know some of the country’s best exports – Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, or Isabel Coixet, just to name a few. But there’s much more to explore: other brilliant, talented people in the areas of directing, acting, producing, writing, and editing. For example, you’ve probably seen several videos produced by Canada (which is also behind The Cause of the Accident that Set the Fire), a Barcelona-based production company that has worked with everyone from Dua Lipa to Rosalía, to The Chemical Brothers, adidas, Puma, and Miu Miu. With that in mind, it’s clear that most people know about Spanish audiovisual culture, it may need just a bit more of promotion, strengthening, and branding. With The Cause of the Accident that Set the Fire, ICEX aims to do just that.

Speaking with Lope Serrano, the film director, he says: “The assignment called for a very visual piece that had creativity and creative talent as its central theme. This was the briefing, but we were given a lot of freedom to develop it. We thought that the best thing was to pose a conflict around the inherent vulnerability of the creative act rather than a mere propagandistic celebration of talent.” The result is this short film about a young director (Greta Prieto) who’s already on set, the team is ready to roll, but she finds an unexpected inner conflict: “She doesn’t know the reason for her characters, she doesn’t know why the car crashed, she doesn’t know what the cause of the accident she is filming is,” Lope explains. “The creative process is often painful because it is vague and uncertain in its purpose, but obsessive and exhausting in its demands. Without yet having form, it demands meaning,” he concludes.

While she struggles to find the answers to her own script and idea, the visually striking film gives us precious insights into the behind-the-scenes of a real-life film set: the producer trying to get things started, the actors trying to understand the psyche of their characters, etc. It’s a very clever idea to use a meta language to talk about the audiovisual industry. “The relationship between fiction and reality is always very exciting, they are ideas so similar and at the same time so antagonistic that wonderful confusions occur. Fiction is still an expression freed from reality, an idealization of reality. What a fragile balance for deception to work!,” Lope says.

Funny, insightful, original – all of these define the short film, which premiered at the prestigious San Sebastián Film Festival (SSIFF) a few days ago, and which will travel to other international fairs and festivals like Cannes’ MIPCOM and Las Vegas’ AFM (American Film Market) in the next few months. As the ICEX explains, the initiative Where Talent Ignites Fantasy Keeps on Blazing aims “to promote and consolidate the image of Audiovisual from Spain on the international scene.” And they’re taking the right steps in that direction.

What’s just as important, as Lope Serrano says, is that “talent cannot be cultivated; it is a perfume, a breeze. What can be fostered are conditions so that girls and boys have access to and are instructed in the enjoyment of culture. If this is done with love and dedication, these girls and boys will grow up confident in themselves and in their own curiosity and from there the most tenacious and funny, the most resistant and insolent, the bravest and the luckiest will become the artists of the future.”