‘Black Bread’ Goya Winner Nora Navas to Star in ‘The Bastard Daughter’ (EXCLUSIVE) 

Nora Navas, who won a Spanish Academy Goya and San Sebastian best actress award for her central performance in “Black Bread,” is attached to star in “The Bastard Daughter” (“La Hija Bastarda”), the feature film debut of New York-trained actress-turned-director Olivia Delcán. 

Also written by Delcán, “The Bastard Daughter” is lead produced by Solita Films, founded by brothers José and César Esteban Alenda and co-produced  by Barcelona-based Sumendi Filmak, behind “Bad Beast,” a buzz title in main competition at this year’s Malaga Festival. Completing the prestige package, “Alcarràs” producer Elastica Films distributes in Spain; streaming service Filmin has acquired SVOD rights.  

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The Alenda brothers impressed directing the Goya-nominated “Sin Fin” but have scored most consistently this decade co-producing the debuts of female directors, led by Glorimar Marrero Sánchez, behind Sundance-selected “The Fishbowl,” Antonella Sudasassi’s “The Awakening of Ants,” a Berlinale Forum screener and María Zanetti’s “Alemania,” which bowed in San Sebastián’s Horizontes Latinos.  

Before playing a recurrent role in “Warrior Nun” and featuring in “Locked Up,” Delcán burst onto the scene in 2015 co-writing and starring in Fernando Colomo’s “La Isla Bonita,” playing Olivia, the free-wheeling daughter of a neighbor. She studied acting at the William Esper Studio for the performing arts in Manhattan. 

Navas is known for her nuance. Both qualities may mesh in “The Bastard Daughter.” Navas plays a woman, 56, living on the Spanish Mediterranean island of Monica, whose mother has just died. She doesn’t know if she wants to be with her daughter, 30, back home on the island, or if she’s happy. What she does know is that she’s exhausted, and will start to rip things up. “I am going to start doing things wrong,” the character says.

A “sharp, free-spirited and unpredictable tragicomedy,” Delcán told Variety, “The Bastard Daughter” “could be a Nino Bravo song sung by Gloria from Sebastian Lelio’s film and written by Maren Ade, director of ‘Toni Erdmann.’

It is also shaped by personal experience. “I have learned that family secrets and mysteries are part of my identity, and without them, I would be someone else,” Delcán said. 

“I grew up surrounded by women: my grandmother had six daughters, and her six daughters had nine daughters. That’s why the female characters in ‘The Bastard Daughter’ are inspired by them,” she added. They are the women who care for and dedicate themselves to their families but are also independent and enterprising, carving out their own path in a world dominated by men.”

Winning the Atlàntida Mallorca Talent Lab and backed by the Balearic Cinema Institute (ICIB) and the Menorca Insular Conseil, “The Bastard Daughter,” currently being financed,  is scheduled to go into production in Autumn 2027.