Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks has snapped up worldwide sales rights to Jaime Chavarri’s upcoming comedy, “La Manzana de Oro” (“The Golden Apple”).
In a separate deal, Spanish pubcaster RTVE has clinched free TV rights.
Produced by Mario Real and Enrique González Khun at the fledgling La Pirueta Films and described as “Dead Poets Society” meets “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “La Manzana de Oro” marks the comeback of one of Spain’s great directors of the last half century after his triple Goya-winning 2005 biopic “Camarón: When Flamenco Became Legend.”
Chavarri, 79, is best known for sophisticated arthouse dramas “The Disenchantment,” “To an Unknown God” and “Dedicated to…,” produced by Elias Querejeta, as well as smash hits “Bicycles Are for the Summer” and “The Things of Love.”
“We are indeed blessed to be working with a masterful director like Jaime Chavarri whose films have touched the hearts of audiences and critics worldwide,” said FilmSharks’ Guido Rud.
Based on prize-winning novel “Ávidas Pretensiones” by Fernando Aramburu, the film begins with the arrival of an unexpected guest who disrupts an annual conference of poets at a remote convent.
“‘La Manzana de Oro’ accompanies three generations of poets who meet each year in a Castilian convent competing for a prize: the Apple – of discord – in the title; who intertwine their envies and loves and make us accomplices in their bedtime stories, their absences, their frustrations and their small victories: turning the little odyssey of their characters into a satire of ourselves,” Chávarri said.
Both turning on the emotional hostages left to fortune by past trauma, “The Disenchantment” profiled poet Leopoldo Panero while “To an Unknown God” flashes back to the protagonist’s adolescence, spent in the same house as Federico García Lorca.
The film will “complete an unplanned trilogy about contemporary Spanish poets,” Chavarri explained, offering “a general reflection, good-humored and somewhat melancholic.”
“Jaime hasn’t filmed for a long time, although he remains active teaching classes and theater directing as well, but not because he didn’t want to but because the projects presented to him did not move him and he didn’t feel he should do them,” said Real, who hopes to place the satire at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival.
Manzana de Oro
Courtesy of FilmSharks