MADRID — Navarre shall be the wonder of the world. Again. The 2020 4th Conecta Fiction, a Europe-Latin American co-production forum which is Spain’s biggest TV industry event, will take place for the second year running in Pamplona, capital of the northern region of Navarre.
Next year’s event will run at the slightly later date of June 22-25.
The return to Navarre comes after an agreement between Inside Content, which is responsible for the design and the production of the event, and on one hand the Navarre government via Nicdo, Navarre’s Infrastructures, Culture, Sports and Leisure institution and Sodena, its business development entity, and on the other the SGAE Foundation.
The accord has been made with the collaboration of the Navarra Audiovisual Cluster (Clavna) and the Navarre Association of Producers and Audiovisual Professionals (Napar).
Conecta Fiction will take place once more at Navarre’s Baluarte Congress Center and Auditorium of Navarra, which are run by Nicdo.
According to Géraldine Gonard, director of Conecta Fictin, next year’s 4th edition will maintain its core concept of different project-pitching sessions, conferences, workshops, keynotes, and one-to-one meetings.
“However, we are preparing new surprising aspects that aim at going one step further if we compare Concta Fiction to other international gatherings,” she added.
These will be incorporated “without losing sight of our main goal, which is that Conecta Fiction should be practical, it should work, and should be a point of reference, where participants always obtain results,” Gonard said.
Driven by the seemingly peak-less growth of high-end production in Spain and most of Latin America, with Spain positioning itself an a center of a new burgeoning Spanish-language market, the biggest accessible language market in the world, the 3rd Conecta Fiction opened with “Invisible Heroes,” a Finnish-Chilean co-production between Kaiho Republic, Parox, YLE, and Chilevisión. It closed with “Monzon,” produced by the Buena Vista Production Group, a chronicle of the Argentine’s boxing legend’s arrest and trial, accused of murdering wife Alicia Muniz, which has proved a record-breaking smash hit on Turner Latin America’s Space on Monday from its June 17 bow.
2019’s Conecta Fiction also featured a brace of announcements such as of Argentina’s Pol-ka optioning “El cielo a tiros,” the latest novel from “Rosario Tijeras” author, Colombian novelist Jorge Franco.
Also at this year’s Conecta Fiction, Spanish pubcaster RTVE confirmed an open secret, that it would be producing “Inés of My Soul” with Chile’s broadcast network Chilevisión, Spain’s Lagardère-owned Boomerang TV and with Amazon Prime Video securing exclusive streaming rights in the U.S., Spain and Latin America.
All are significant. As more global streaming platforms launch, companies are exploring international co-production, sometimes with the most unlikely of territorial partners, as a means of retaining IP and building company asset value.
“Monzon” came across as an incontrovertible sign of Disney’s large artistic ambitions, borrowing from the lexicon of horror movies, involving complex camera shots and studied sound design.
“El Cielo a Tiros” marks Pol-ka first production made totally outside Argentina, as many companies move ever more into international business.
“Inés” show Spanish broadcaster RTVE moving into high-end big historical canvas “event” series entertainment.
Conecta Fiction’s return to Navarre will allow participants to also connect to one of Spain’s fastest-expanding regions for film and TV productions. Navarre offers attractive tax credits, available to international shoots most easily via co-production and stunning locations such as the fairytale Royal Castle at Olite and its badlands of Bardenas Reales National Park, the desert across which Daenerys leads the Dothraki in “Game of Thrones.”
The region, made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s celebration of the Pamplona bull-runs, also now boasts a burgeoning animation and post-production industry, energetically supported by its government. Talent and production hubs can now come from anywhere.
The image for Conecta Fiction 4 is the work of photographer José Luis Tejedor, part of “Tránsito,” his best-known original series. Portraying Conduct Fiction, it captures the “fusion of all those magical moments of professional exchanges, which occur in specific meetings and moments all in the same space…the reality that will give way to fiction,” Tejedor said.
