Rodrigo Sorogoyen, creator of ‘Los años nuevos’: ‘We have conceived the series as a piece of cinema’

• The 69th edition of the festival is hosting the Spanish premiere of The New Years, a ten-episode television series that will be broadcast in its entirety at the festival.
• The filmmaker was accompanied by actors Iría del Río and Francesco Carril; co-writers and co-creators Sara Cano and Paula Fabra; and producers Fran Araújo (Movistar+) and Nacho Lavilla (Caballo Films).

Valladolid, 18 October 2024. Director and screenwriter Rodrigo Sorogoyen has landed on the opening day of the 69th SEMINCI to present his latest project, The New Years, one of the most eagerly awaited Spanish television productions of the year. The ten-episode series, distributed by Movistar+, is included in this year’s SEMINCI Special Screenings and will be screened in two blocks of five episodes each. With it, the filmmaker from Madrid, author of works such as El reino and As bestas (the latter won him nine Goya awards, including best film, direction and original screenplay), returns to the series format, where he already signed the outstanding Antidisturbios, also with Movistar+.

As the director of SEMINCI, José Luis Cienfuegos, has pointed out, the inclusion of The New Years in the programme of the 69th edition reinforces the festival’s commitment to series by outstanding authors, which has been proven in previous years with titles such as Berlin Alexanderplatz, Twin Peaks or Lars Von Trier’s The Kingdom. Works that, like Los años nuevos, demonstrate a filmic sensibility applied to the television format. ‘We feel it is a great honour to be here opening with what is a television series, although we have conceived it as a piece of cinema’, says Sorogoyen.

Commenting on this conception of the project, the filmmaker adds: ‘It was clear to us from the beginning that we wanted each chapter to work very well as a unit, not to have totally different tones, even though particular sub-genres are explored. But we also wanted there to be a colour that was different enough to make each chapter special’.

Shot in chronological order, Los años nuevos follows a couple’s relationship over ten years, each episode portraying a different New Year’s Eve. An original premise that was always maintained, as Paula Fabra, co-writer and co-creator of the series, notes. ‘I was very clear that it had to be a decade’, says Sorogoyen, ’It’s ten moments of our characters on New Year’s Eve. There was a lot of risk that they would be very similar, so we tried, always from a plausible point of view, to make ten very different films, while at the same time, of course, advancing the plot and the evolution of this couple’. ‘That was the biggest production challenge,’ adds Nacho Lavilla, producer of Caballo Films, who shared his experiences of filming inside and outside Spain.

Teamwork

Although Los años nuevos is promoted as a series by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, he emphasises that it is a work of a collective nature. ‘I feel it is a very collective series,’ he says, praising the participation of the co-creators and co-directors David Martín de los Santos (La vida era eso) and Sandra Romero (Por donde pasa el silencio), as well as the role of the main characters, Francesco Carril and Iría del Río, whom he defines as ‘the soul of the series’.

About the acting work, Carril says: ‘That degree of intimacy that you can see in the series, that relationship that we have built also comes a lot from Rui’s way of working. He is a person who begins to share with you many things about the series that not only have to do with your own work, but also with certain aesthetic, artistic and script decisions. This sharing of his own vision as a filmmaker makes you feel part of something. This is important because often actors feel like we are there for and only for our craft, but when you feel part of it, which doesn’t happen very often, you feel the project is yours too’.

Iría del Río adds: ‘Rui has a very strong commitment to verisimilitude. I feel that it is very important to him that things make sense and have coherence. David and Sandra have a similar sensibility, a commitment to trying to generate something that seems real. For Francesco and I it was an opportunity to take advantage of what was being offered to us, to go deep with something. As actors it’s a very nice gift’.

The actors, who play the 30-something couple Ana and Oscar, also spoke of the compatibility they found with each other while filming. ‘We’re lucky that we’ve connected. It’s very easy for me to fall in love with you, with you, with the way you are. We got to know each other in record time and that has also been fundamental to be able to get as close as we have gotten to that level of intimacy’, says del Río: ‘Chemistry is not chosen, and it has also been Rodrigo’s merit to see that this chemistry existed’.

This was also central to the shooting of the sex scenes. ‘The design of the scenes began with words. First we did a great exercise of putting everything into words, and then we put it into choreography, translating it into movements. At all times Fran and I were very comfortable,’ says del Río. He also highlights the value of a set with a strong female presence, which Carril defines as a safe place: ‘These sequences could not have been shot if we didn’t know how to generate a bond: of work, but also of life and friendship’.

Collaboration between Sorogoyen and Movistar+

Los años nuevos was born as a Caballo Films project, later joined by Movistar+. The executive producer of Movistar+, Fran Araújo, points out that the result exceeded the platform’s expectations: ‘For us the main thing is to achieve something that is important, unforgettable and unique; something that is very difficult to achieve today. And we saw how our expectations were more than fulfilled. It was better than we could have imagined. In the world we live in, where 50 series are made every year in Spain and hundreds around the world, it is marvellous to achieve a work like this, which I will still remember in 15 years’ time. It seems that the results go hand in hand with a formula, a logic, and experience tells us otherwise. You establish a bond of life with the people you are seeing and I think that is an absolute success’.

Los años nuevos can be seen in some cinemas in the country before its arrival on Movistar+ from 28 November. The plot, written by Sara Cano, Paula Fabra and Sorogoyen, together with Marina Rodríguez Colas and Antonio Rojano, follows the relationship of a couple in their thirties, Ana (Iría del Río) and Óscar (Francesco Carril) from 2015 to the present day.

Press contact:

983 42 64 60

prensa@seminci.com