By Variety | Created at 2026-08-12 14:55:43 | Updated at 2026-08-12 16:17:37
2 hours ago
Big Basque period production “Blind Ants,” “How the Lights Get In” from emerging director Diego Llorente and “War Material Captured From the Enemy,” the first feature directed by “The Others” editor Nacho Ruiz Capillas, all played at a vibrant second edition of Locarno’s Spanish Film Previews.
Joined by Carmela Román’s “Bed of Grass” and “Juliette & Camille,” two hybrid doc-fictions, the lineup also served to underscore one big driver powering Spanish cinema: its bullish regional industries.
Directed by Igor Legarreta (“All the Moons”), “Blind Ants” weighs in as a calling card for Basque Country production standards, galvanized by up-to 70% tax credits, attracting top companies from the rest of Spain, such as two of the film’s producers, Buendía Estudios and Lazona.
Adapting a Basque modern classic by Ramón Pinilla, Legarreta’s third feature is sold by Playtime, produced by top Basque production house Lamia and bound for release in Spain by Disney’s BVI on Oct. 9 – a powerful combination.
Set in 1935, “Blind Ants” was sneak peeked at Locarno via an impactful excerpt located on Bizkaia’s plunging north coast cliffs, where a storm destroys an English coal ship on the rocks below and Algorta’s villagers scramble for the cargo.
The Spanish Previews spoke loud of well-oiled production models which explain how Spain produced in 2025 more features than any other country in Europe, according to the Cannes Marché de Film’s 2026 Focus report.
Four of the Preview titles are pan-regional co-productions, and three at least have international partners, including for “Black Ants” prestige production house Caviar (“Sound of Metal,” “Dead End”) in Belgium, Spain’s go-to co-producer territory.
Regional production, one engine driving Spain’s dramatic output uptick, is led by Catalonia, represented at the Spanish Previews by “Juliette & Camille.” It is also powered by the Basque Country, Galicia (“Juliette & Camille”), Andalusia (“Bed of Grass”) and Asturias, whose industry is still growing, said Lara González Lobo at Gijón-based Failo Cine, producer of Diego Llorente’s “How the Lights Get In,” now in post but already picked up for world sales by Patra Spanou Film.
“We have such a wide range of creative points of view from Spain from all the corners of the peninsula,” said Javier García Puerto, a Tallinn Black Nights programmer and REC Lab director who moderated the Previews.
Llorente’s follow-up to “Notes on a Summer,” which competed at IFF Rotterdam competition and won a Thessaloniki Silver Alexander, his third fiction feature, like “Juliette & Camille,” picks up on the shifting bedrock relationships beyond those of a cisgender couple. In “Juliette & Camille,” this is seen in a search for belonging, framed as a relationship to place and intimacy with chosen people.
Significantly too, as the world faces an uncertain future, two films tackle attempts to understand an uncertain past: “Bed of Grass,” an artistic and emotional rehabilitation drama from Carmela Román, and “War Material Captured From the Enemy,” the directorial debut of Nacho Ruiz Capillas, one of Spain’s most distinguished film editors (“The Others,” “Agora,” “Maixabel,” “The 47”).
In “War Material,” Ruiz Capillas inherits a box of 6,000 negatives, mostly from the Spanish Civil War, that have never been developed or seen. As he brings them to light in the present, Ruiz Capillas’ mother, 88, is losing her memories to Alzheimer affliction.
“While the past resurfaces, the present dissolves. A documentary about the fragility of everything we think we remember,” the synopsis runs. This multi-level tale of the battle against oblivion made for one of the Previews’ highlights.
The Spanish Film Previews were supported by Spain’s ICAA film agency, in collaboration with trade and investment board ICEX.
A closer look at the titles:
“Bed of Grass” (“Lecho de pasto,” Carmela Román, Mala Pécora, Hikaya Cinema, Spain)
Román made a short film with her lover, also her editor. “When I saw the first cut, I knew two things: That I would never shoot a film again and that she no longer loved me,” Román recalls in a memorable early voiceover in “Bed of Grass.” Traumatized by both events, she loses any memory of either, so sets out years later to recreate both, using actors, building a new sense of identity as a cineaste. Lying on the experimental side of arthouse, a self rehabilitation drama sporting Euro doc fest potential.
“Blind Ants” (“Inurri Itsuak,” Igor Legarreta, Lamia Producciones, Lamia Films, Lazona Zinema, Lazona Producciones, Bruja del Norte AIE, Buendía Estudios Bizkaia, Sideral Cinema, co-produced by Caviar Antwerp, Belgium)
Billed as a family drama and an epic Western, in “Blind Ants” dirt poor patriarch Sabas Jauregui sees in the English ship’s coal a chance to survive winter, but his wife Josefa fears disaster. In the dramatic excerpt seen at Locarno, one son is lowered by a perilous rope down a storm-drenched cliff, courting tragedy. Already Sabas’ children seem far less keen on what could be seen as robbery. “It’s rare to have a Basque language film of such a big budget, but it was made with significant support from the Basque government and network EiTB,” Lamia producer Iker Ganuza told Variety.
“How the Light Gets In” (“Así entra la luz,” Diego Llorente, Failo Cine, Báltico, Spain, in co-production with tarkiofilm, Uruguay)
From a 10-minute excerpt, emerging Asturias director Llorente makes good on his promise in “How the Lights Get In.” Separated after 10 years when Victor is forced to relocate to Buenos Aires for some months, he and partner Irene have time to consider if their life together is what they really want. Irene increasingly builds what is described as “a fragile sense of family“ with Marina, an old school friend and now mother. Shot naturalistically in mostly static fixed camera shots, what impresses especially is Llorente’s ability to insinuate characters’ sentiments without direct dialog exposition.
“Juliette & Camille” (Paloma Zapata, La Fabrica Naranja, Spain, Indígena Films, Spain; Boca del Cielo Producciones, México)
Juliette, born in Barcelona to Peruvian parents and searching for her roots, meets up with Camille, from France but settled in Galicia, who creates electronic music from the sounds of nature. Over three rainy days at a sound studio in a forest in Galicia, they set out to record a song, and slowly, through music, their relationship evolves. “What begins as a musical encounter becomes something very different,” Zapata (“La Singla”) said at the Spanish Film Previews before introducing 15 minutes of excerpts from the film. A feature which charts a search for a sense of belonging in a world in flux. “Without belonging, you’re left with a deep sense of solitude,” Camille says.
“War Material Captured From the Enemy” (“Material de guerra capturado al enemigo,” Nacho Ruiz Capillas, The Aurora Project, Spain)
“This is about memory in the human collective, memories that didn’t happen,” Ruiz Capillos comments in “War Material.” When revealed, his grandfather’s photos, mostly from the Spanish Civil War, spark rich reflections: “My mother and celluloid share a destiny: Both decompose at around 90 years of age,” he says at one time. Many Spaniards lived or even committed atrocities in the Civil War, suffering a collective guilt, Ruiz Capillas surmises. So “forgetting became a virtue.” Interweaving his mother’s Alzheimer illness and an ongoing medley of his grandfather’s photos, the film suggests that “the past ends up dissolving. It’s a question of time. There will be a collective Alzheimer, a dissolution of everything lived,” Ruiz Capillas told Variety at Locarno. Recuperating his grandfather’s legacy, however, the film can be seen as an act of rebellion, the enemy of the title not the Republicans of a Francoist exhibition caught in one photo, but the inexorable passage of time.
