Carla Simón, Nicolás Méndez, Turbo Shorts Capture Spain’s New Wave International Lift-Off  

First, on Saturday night, Spaniard Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved,” starring Javier Bardem and Victoria Luengo, scored some of the best reviews of any competition title to date this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

One evening later, on May 17, a long line formed around the corner of Cannes’ Olympia theater for the sold out Where Talent Ignites – Stories Travel Further showcase, celebrating Spain’s breakout onto the international stage in cinema, embodied by Sorogoyen. There was a palpable, buzzy atmosphere in the room as the success of Spanish cinema at the French fete this year was brought up on stage.  

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The 90-minute unveil also highlighted further international breakout talent and stage-centered other Spanish creative industries – dance, fashion and design – world premiering three new short films from Berlin Golden Bear winner Carla Simon (“Alcarràs), Rosalía music vid director Nicolás Méndez and flamenco guitarist Yerai Cortés, who scored Turbo‘s nearly seven-minute piece “La Tarara” by creative duo Turbo, comprised of Pau López and Gerardo del Hierro. 

“Flamenco,” from Simón, follows Rocío, who returns to her Ebro Delta home to attend her mother’s funeral. “La Tarara,” Mendez’s first fiction piece after directing Rosalia’s extraordinary music vid “Berghain,” turns on Carmen (Ingrid García Jonsson), brainy but socially tongue-tied, whose sister works in fashion. He moves into her sister’s flat to take care of her obstreperous nephew when sis takes off for a week. An animated short, “La Llama” presents a fast-paced vision of more than a century of Spanish design and architecture.

Set for immediate online release on the Where Talent Ignites website, the short films are produced by Audiovisual From Spain, part of ICEX Spain Trade and Investment, in collaboration with Mamma Team (“Flamenco”), Canada (“La Tarara”) and White Horse and Apartamento (“La Llama”). 

Variety contributor Rafa Sales Ross served as m.c. of the Where Talent Ignites – Stories Travel Further showcase.

All three short films talk about creativity. “La Llama” is well served by a voice-over from flamenco singer La Tania, which dispenses advice to wannabe creators: “You are waiting for a luck you already have. It is inside you.” The film also ends with a title card that reads “created solely by humans making beautiful mistakes,” with Del Hierro noting on Sunday night that the directors wanted to make clear no artificial intelligence was used in the process of making the film. 

In “La Tarara,” Carmen finally establishes a connection with her nephew when she tries on her sister’s extraordinary red dress. Compared to “Berghain,” “I am really interested in trying something much more grounded, but talking not just about fashion but the creative act itself, its transformative power and as a form of communication,” Méndez tells Variety.  

Spain has one of Europe’s most extraordinary centuries-old cultural heritages. “We are super connected with our culture and not from schoolbooks. It’s all around us. You go out, and you see the Sagrada Familia for free. We have it in our DNA,” says López.

In “Flamenco,” at a post-funeral party, Rocío performs a wild dance, flamenco but with a post-punk breakdance physicality. She stops, however, when an aged woman breaks out into a more traditional song, afraid she had performed out of place.

“Flamenco has a tension between tradition and change, and is very much born in families, transmitted generation to generation, so the idea was to have Rocío going back to her origins, reconciling with them and feeling free to create,“ Simón said on stage at the Olympia Sunday night.

What do the people do at the trendy fashion party Carmen’s sister organizes at the beginning of “La Tarara”? Sing along to the titular song, which has been sung since Medieval times.  

Re-cast in modern works, the singularity of Spain, its landscapes and cultural resilience in a homogenised global context, is one reason why Spain has broken out abroad.

Another is its ever-growing international star system, in creatives and actors. “La Llama” is galvanized by a score by Cortés, hailed as Spain’s most exciting young flamenco guitarist, whose work mixes tradition and digital modernity, Del Hierro notes.

Part inspired by Spaniard auteurist designer Jaime Hayon’s arresting sense of design – a protagonist with a beak nose, shiny colors, an avoidance of sharp angles – it recreates over a century of Spanish design and architecture, every single object, down to an ashtray, being made in Spain.  

Rocío in “Flamenco” is played by Rocío Molina, acclaimed in France and Italy, where she was awarded in 2002 a Venice Biennale of Dance award for her “vanguard, singular and innately powerful choreographies.”

It was no easy call securing Molina’s availability given her high-profile, “Flamenco” producer Oscar Romagosa noted on stage Sunday night.

Delivering one of the most memorable performances in Netflix’s smash hit “Elite,” and superb in Alauda Ruíz de Azúa’s “Querer,” Miguel Bernadeau pops up in “La Tarara” as a partygoer and potential Carmen beau. 

Carmen’s sister in the same short is played by Barbara Lennie, who seems destined for international stardom as the lead of Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas,” which bows in Cannes Competition this Tuesday. 

Spain’s Lift Off on the International Stage

Where Talent Ignites originally launched in 2024 with what Variety described as a star-studded, “very meta,” “polished” seven-minute musical fashion film “La causa del accidente que provocó el incendio,” featuring cameos by J.A.Bayona, a 2024 Oscar-nominee for “Society of the Snow” and Albert Serra, whose “Pacifiction” played Cannes 2022 competition.

Two years later, “Spain continues to consolidate as an international audiovisual reference. At ICEX, we want to push this positioning with initiatives generating visibility and real business opportunities,” said ICEX CEO Elisa Carbonell. This time round, the idea is to “develop connections with other creative sectors.” The campaign comes in a year of an “extraordinary, milestone Spanish cinema presence at the Cannes Festival,” she adds.

That’s certainly no exaggeration. Over 2025-26, no country anywhere in the world outside France, not even the U.S., has more Cannes Palme d’Or contenders than Spain.

Pedro Almodóvar, Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo have made Cannes’ 2026 main competition cut; Oliver Laxe and Carla Simón were selected in 2025.

Arguably, Spain also has two of the biggest stars at this year’s Cannes Film Festival: Almodóvar and Javier Bardem, who fronts Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved.”

“The three Spanish films that are here truly deserve it. The fact that they are here says a lot about our industry,” said Bardem. Underscoring this strength in depth of features, 11 Spanish productions play major sections at Cannes, doubling prior high marks this century. 

“Spanish cinema in general is at a sweet moment. Film funds have realized that investing in cinema makes sense, and our films are traveling, which obviously gives you the opportunity to think bigger. A lot of new voices are emerging and we are taking more risks on the way that we tell stories,” Simón tells Variety. 

That vibrancy is based on bullish economic realities. Concurrently, led by Catalonia, Spain’s regional governments have stepped up backing for film and TV. In January 2024, Movistar Plus+ launched a first movie slate, its aim to co-produce “event auteur” movies empowered by budgets competitive with big arthouse films in France. Shooting in Spain’s Canary Islands, Spanish films can tap 54-45% tax incentives, among the most competitive in Europe.

It is no coincidence that Catalonia has six feature productions selected for Cannes this year, nor that three of Spain’s five Cannes competition movies in 2025 and 2026 are Movistar Plus+ “event auteur” titles: “Sirāt,” “The Beloved” and “La Bola Negra.” It also paid a handsome pre-buy for a fourth, “Bitter Christmas.” It’s not chance, either, that two of the five are part shot and set in the Canary Islands. 

Sunday’s Where Talent Ignites caught that sense of empowerment and excitement at the results.

All three shorts are now available on the Where Talent Ignites website.