Eduardo Casanova: Last News

Itziar Castro has died at the age of 46, leaving the entertainment industry rattled. Her death was announced by the Spanish media, revealing that she died earlier today, at Lloret de Mar in Spain. Yesterday, Castro was in the municipal pool as she supervised a performance for a swimming competition when she reported feeling sick.

Liza Foreman In 1995, Alex de la Iglesia directed his second feature, “The Day of the Beast,” which marked a milestone in Spanish cinema, yoking full-on U.S. genre tropes – a bloody against-the-clock search for an Antichrist – with a bathetic but very grounded Spanish reality, featuring a downbeat boarding house, a local metalhead and the tawdry star of an occult-themed trash TV show.  The film opened the floodgates for other directors, weened on VHS binging, to mix U.S. and Spanish realities. Now nearly 30 years later, De la Iglesia is at it again. A showreel of movies and series made by Pokeepsie Films, the shingle he founded with Carolina Bang in 2009, dazzled at a Next from Spain showcase panel on Monday at Berlinale Series Market. Standouts included the sheer visual boldness of excerpts, their pop out tones, – such as in Eduardo Casanova’s lush pink in “La Pietá” – or mixture of gore, high-production values and comedy, as in HBO Max series “30 Coins.”

Holly Jones Off the heels of a world premiere at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where he scooped the Proxima Special Jury Prize, writer-director Eduardo Casanova arrives in Montreal to screen his latest feature “La Piedad” (“La Pietà”) as part of the Queer Genre Cinema Spotlight at Fantasia. The screening marks its North American debut.The film offers a delightfully bizarre peek into the lives of manic and obsessive Libertad (Ángela Molina), a mother with an insatiable desire to be needed, and her son, Mateo (Manel Llunell), who warily leans into her toxic trappings as the pair become increasingly entwined.A personal story unfurls in tandem with a poignant subplot that likens their familial relationship to that of a populace and its dictator, showing that those in control of a mere few can use propaganda just as readily as a sadistic leader to manipulate their wards into submission.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentBanijay Iberia has struck a strategic partnership with Alex de la Iglesia which will see the high-profile Spanish writer-director and his partner at Pokeespsie Films, actor-producer Carolina Bang, create high-end original series and fiction for Banijay.Pokeepsie Films credits include HBO Max hit “30 Coins,” co-written and directed by De La Iglesia. It is believed that the deal involves Banijay Iberia taking an equity investment in Pokeepsie.No details of new projects are given.