The future of independent production

Among the changing gazes are also the women involved in production. As the participants in the technical round table ‘The future of independent production: challenges for the changeover’, co-organised with ECAM Industry, agreed, the more women join this function, the more the collective imaginary will change, because women producers not only look for funding, but also for talent and promote projects. ‘We have to understand the figure of production from a 360º point of view’, warned Marisa Fernández Armenteros, who from her production company Buena Pinta Media has produced films such as Cinco lobitos, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa and Un amor, by Isabel Coixet.

‘Independent producers bring young talent forward,’ agreed Sara de la Fuente, founder of Mammut Films. For the young producer, who has supported award-winning projects at festivals such as Sandra Romero‘s Por donde pasa el silencio, ‘producers are catalysts for issues that are talked about in film, and I find that those of our generation are not represented’.

In this sense, another representative of the generational change in Spanish production is Silvia Fuentes, producer of O corno, by Jaione Camborda, Golden Shell for Best Film at the San Sebastian Festival. The promoter of the Galician production company Sétima lamented the centrality of the audiovisual industry and advocated for producers’ associations as the common space from which to share points of view in order to understand the past, present and future of the sector.

She also discussed her experience with project incubators as a forum for bringing creators into contact with the industry. A platform that Marisa Fernández Armenteros also praised as a showcase for the presentation of new scripts. ‘We are not inaccessible. We need to find films’, she announced. Although she acknowledged the lack of diversity in the work presented to the industry and her desire to see more comedies represented among the selection. ‘I don’t want to produce Cinco lobitos 2 or find an Alice Rohrwacher. Find your own approach,’ she warned young screenwriters and directors.

She then also recalled that the public funding model limits the number of projects per year that each producer can submit. ‘The reality now is that the box office is a lottery and the margin for error is zero for independent productions. Cinema rivals other forms of entertainment and now cinema is seen in different windows; this has made it necessary to reposition the pieces’, and she delivered a message: ‘If the big companies want to co-produce with small ones, let them do it for real, not just by contributing money and appearing on the red carpet’.

‘The excel has become complicated,’ added María Luisa Gutiérrez, founder of Bowfinger International Pictures and CEO of Amiguetes Enterprise, the production company behind blockbusters such as Santiago Segura’s Padre no hay más que uno, in reference to balancing the budget of a production. ‘Costs have gone up because of the war in Ukraine and new labour agreements. Rights also cost more, and it is more complicated for the platforms’, he lamented, as well as raising his voice in favour of recovering institutional support for independent producers, who were a reference in Spanish cinema. ‘Back then they were supported; now it seems that only the platforms are supported, as they create many jobs, and there are also many jobs that depend on independent talent. In order for a creative to later work for a platform, an independent must have previously backed them. And we are the ones who lose everything if the project fails financially’.

Even so, Mª Luisa Gutiérrez defended her decision to set up her own production company: ‘If you work for someone else, you become like a waiter who does what the audience asks for. On the other hand, as independents, we can do what we want, be different and bring diversity to Spanish cinema. I prefer to have my own little bar’.