Comment on Incentives Make the World Go Round: The Basque Country’s Production Surge

Few celebrities have quite as much experience with crisis PR as Ellen DeGeneres. As anyone who was sentient in 1997 will recall, she confirmed years’ worth of rumors about her sexual orientation on the cover of a certain magazine: “Yep, I’m Gay.” It was a transitional moment for LGBTQ people in mainstream American culture, and DeGeneres’ coming out still, unfortunately, qualified as a controversy.

For producer Barry Navidi, Johnny Depp’s directorial comeback “Modi, Three Days on the Wings of Madness” marks a full-circle moment in an unconventional career. Navidi’s first time working with Depp nearly 30 years ago on the 1995 project “Divine Rapture” ended in disappointment when the production was shelved. But on Tuesday, the two will celebrate […]

Spanish rights group Egeda hosted a round table Sept. 23 at the San Sebastian Festival to shed light on its bid to find and explore solutions to the stickiest challenge facing filmmakers – access to financing. The panel featuring ICAA head Ignasi Camós, Luis Cueto from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Service, Javier […]

Audiovisual from Spain, operated by Spanish governmental export and investment org ICEX, hosted a short film screening, roundtable discussion and cocktail party at the San Sebastian Festival on Tuesday evening to promote its new screen industry promotion campaign: Spain, Where Talent Ignites. At the city’s historic Tabakalera culture center, ICEX CEO Elisa Carbonell explained, “This […]

Tax incentives fuel film production and the Basque Country is no exception. Already boasting attractive incentives, its region of Bizkaia has raised the bar, now offering among most competitive tax breaks in Spain. With up-to-70% tax deductions, the impact has been immediate. Variety has reported previously a fourfold increase in production in 2023 alone, and the pipeline […]

In July, José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastián Film Festival, highlighted the growing prominence of documentaries at this year’s event. Among the notable examples he cited were Albert Serra’s “Afternoons of Solitude,” and the New Directors opener “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés,” the directorial debut of Antón Álvarez, better known to date […]