MADRID — The Incubator feature film development program at Madrid’s prestigious ECAM film school has announced a new agreement with Cannes’ Focus CoPro’, which will see one of The Incubator’s five feature film projects participate at the Cannes Court Métrage – Short Film Corner event in 2020.
Focus CoPro is one of the year’s top showcases dedicated to promoting the international production and co-production of first features. Few events offer better international exposure.
ECAM’s The Incubator is a feature film development program which targets emerging producers, directors and screenwriters from Spain and provides five months of mentoring, individual guidance, workshops and financing of five feature film projects with international potential.
The window for feature film submissions to apply for The Incubator opens Tuesday, Oct 1 and runs through to Oct. 27.
Eligible projects must be submitted by an emerging Spanish producer and have a confirmed Spanish director making their first, second or third feature film. The project must also have a finished first draft screenplay.
Selected projects will receive €10,000 ($11,000) for development and offered travel assistance to Madrid for the incubation period.
This year’s mentors include two-time Goya winner Pablo Berger, director of the 1920’s Seville-set “Snow White” interpretation; Catalan screenwriter and director Neus Ballús (“La plaga”), Sandra Tapia, executive producer at Arcadia Motion Pictures; Marisa F. Armenteros, The Mediapro Studio producer; Emma Lustres, executive producer at Vaca Films; and Nacho Vigalondo (“Colossal”), a multi-hyphenate filmmaker who’s 2005 short film “7:35 de la mañana” was nominated for the Best Short Film Oscar.
The Incubator already has agreements in place with the Toronto Intl. Film Festival’s Filmmaker Lab, Torino Film Lab meeting event, Rotterdam Lab and EAVE, the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs. The program also collaborates with the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Meet Them! Initiative as well as with Paris-based Spain-France co-production forum Small is Biútiful.
Domestically the program is supported by the Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) through its Program for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE).
This year, a former The Incubator project, Lucía Alemany’s “The Innocence,” was a standout hit at the San Sebastian Film Festival, garnering a strong critical and audience reception.
The film takes place in Alemany’s own village, perched on the Castellón plains of Eastern Spain. It follows Lis, a young teenager with dreams of running off to a circus academy, as she enjoys the summer before her final year of school. She faces pressures from a conservative population that can see and hear almost everything the young woman and her older boyfriend get up to.
More than just a coming of age story, the film questions long-held Spanish traditions, conservative rural viewpoints and the changing attitudes of young women as they enter adulthood in communities slow to accept change.