South International Series Festival: 10 Titles to Watch
by John Hopewell · VarietyUnspooling in Cadiz over Oct. 25-31, the South International Series Festival is a bellwether on trends and highlights for the current season. What could be some of its star performers? Following, 10 titles to track, which also often say something about the way the market is going.
“The Big Jump” (Atresmedia International Sales)
One of Atresmedia’s biggest bets at Mipcom, a biopic series about the rise to Olympic Gold Medals at Sydney and Athens of Spanish gymnast Gervasio Deferr and, in a second timeline, his descent into drugs and alcohol, incapable of accepting failure in competition and lost when retired. Oscar Casas (“Instinto,” “Jaguar”) plays Deferr, with “Gangs of Galicia” helmer Roger Gual directs. An Atresplayer Original Series, bowing on Nov. 17.
Related Stories
Cloud Adoption Key to Media Business Exploiting AI
'The Chosen' Plans Biblical Universe: Moses and Joseph Shows, Plus Animated and Unscripted Spinoffs (EXCLUSIVE)
“La Favorita 1922” (Mediterraneo)
From “Grand Hotel” through “Velvet” and “Cable Girls,” Ramon Campos’ Studiocanal j.v. Bambu Producciones has carved out its international reputation, creating modern gender-agenda melodramas that make viewers proud of their extraordinary production values. These look fully on display in new period piece “La Favorita 1922,” Mediaset España’s first collaboration with Bambu and showrun by Josep Cister, who scored with hit RTVE soap “The Vow.” Here, Seville’s Marquise Elena de Valmonte flees to Madrid and sets up a restaurant with four young women.
“The Left-Handed Son” (Movistar Plus+)
The directorial debut of Alberto Rodríguez’s co-scribe Rafael Cobos (“The Plague,” “Offworld”), which won Canneseries 2023’s best short-format series award and went on to sell to France’s Canal+. A gem that turns on an inherited trauma of inadequacy first suffered by Lola (Maria León), belittled by her mother abandoning herself to drink, and then her son, who feels unloved. Set in a classist Seville and sharded with superb Andalusian music, “La Retama,” from Bronquio and Nita, for instance, in a trailer.
“Matilha” (aka “Dogpack,” RTP, Prime Video)
Chosen for 2024’s Berlinale Series Market Selects and the second most-watched series on pubcaster main channel RTP1 in the last five years, “Dogpack” marks the third series from creator-writer-producer Edgar Medina after the trailblazing premium “South” (2019), a Berlinale Copro Series Project, and “Natural Law” (2022). Executive produced by Joni Sighvatsson (“Valhalla Rising”), “Matilha” is a spin-off from the noirish “South,” and tighter, a character drama turning on “South’s” Matilha and Mafalda, as they try to escape his criminal past.
“The Marquess” (“El Marqués,” Mediaset España, Unicorn)
Spain, 1977 Onofre, a journalist, returns to his hometown to investigate a series of murders committed in 1975 in Los Galindos, Seville, the series shuttling between the two periods as he exposes a corrupt aristocrat and a clash between a Spain desperate to preserve the past and another fighting for a modern future. Written by Ignacio del Moral, behind classic social issue movie screenplays for “Mondays in the Sun” and “The Sleeping Voice” and Begoña Álvarez, director of 2018’s “Skam España.”
“Nautilus” (Disney Entertainment)
Surely the biggest show hitting Cadiz, produced by Moonriver and Seven Stories, this series was ditched by Disney + but is now heading to AMC in the U.S. and Spain and Prime Video in the U.K. and Ireland, among multiple ports. Written and produced by Jamie Dormer (“Medici,” “Strike Back”), a reimagining of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” as a Captain Nemo origins tale. Michael Mathews (“Love and Monsters”) directs. Early viewer reviews look all over the place; the series was notably better received in France.
“Joan” (All3Media International)
A Variety Critics’ Pick, “Sophie Turner is thrilling in The CW’s tense and engaging jewel thief drama “Joan,” the show’s Variety review reads, describing “Joan” as a “stellar crime series about opportunity, motherhood and the chances we are willing to take to go after the lives we desire” and praising the “spectacular tension” of the limited series, which premiered on The CW on Oct. 2. Based on the true story of Joan Hannington, a jewel thief in ‘80s England, directed by Richard Langton (“Honour”).
“Querer” (Movistar Plus+)
The TV debut of Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, whose first feature, “Lullaby,” was endorsed by Pedro Almodóvar as “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years” and hailed at San Sebastián as the best Spanish series of 2024. Miren, the wife in a seemingly perfect marriage in outward appearance, goes to a police station to accuse her husband of 30 years of sexual assault. Intertwining a legal thriller with family drama, mixing the tempo of series, a cinematographic contention and emotional build, Ruiz de Azua explores serial rape in marriage.
“Sea Shadows” (“Rivages,” France TV Distribution)
Bowing at the September La Rochelle Festival, the sci-fi eco-thriller has been praised for its high-concept ambition, direction of David Hourrègue, who helmed the Series Mania standout “Germinal” and for the central performance of Fleur Geffrier as a marine scientist who returns to her home town to investigate a shipwreck. She soon realizes there’s something underwater threatening the balance between man and sea. Picked up by France TV Distribution at Series Mania and produced by Mintee Studio and Thalie Images (“The Island of the 30 Coffins”).
“This Town” (Banijay Entertainment)
Fruit of a creative partnership deal between Kudos, a Banijay UK company, and “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight to support Birmingham’s film-TV industry. Starring Michelle Dockery, Nicholas Pinnock and David Dawson, the story of a family and four young people drawn into Coventry and Birmingham’s exploding ska and two-tone music scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Billed by Banijay as both “a high-octane thriller and a family saga, bowing on the BBC in late March to largely some great reviews. “There is no point in resisting this bold, brilliant TV show,” wrote Lucy Mangan in The Guardian.