Isaki Lacuesta: Last News

Carlos Aguilar Cigarette ash piles on top of a few discarded CDs inside a darkened room where the members of a rock band, Los Planetas, struggle to make tracks for their new album. That brief shot conveys more than the mere disarray of the space.

Jamie Lang The 2025 Spanish Academy Goya Award nominations were unveiled today, where the big surprise was Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” being left out of the competition’s best picture category. Although the film won’t compete for the ceremony’s top honor, Almodóvar and both his lead actors, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, all received individual nods, him for best director and the two performers for best actress.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent La Termita Films, the production label of double San Sebastian Golden Shell winners Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campo, has struck a production alliance with Accidental Films, the newly formed label founded by Sara Gonzalo, managing director over 2011-24 of production powerhouse Bambu Producciones. The alliance catches Lacuesta and Campo at new career highs, Lacuesta having directed Berlin competition player “One Year, One Night” and “Saturn Return,” a Spanish Film and Direction winner at March’s Malaga Festival which has just been selected as Spain’s entry in the International Feature Oscar race; Campo co-wrote Iciar Bollain’s anticipated “I’m Nevenka,” which world premieres in San Sebastian main competition this weekend.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Isaki Lacuesta has returned to the Malaga Film Festival with his highly anticipated rock band drama “Saturn Return” (“Segundo Premio”), a fabled account of iconic Spanish group Los Planetas and their struggle to make their legendary third album,“Una semana en un motor de un autobús.” The film, which the award-winning filmmaker directed with Pol Rodríguez and wrote with Fernando Navarro, stars Daniel Ibáñez, Stéphanie Magnin and musician-turned-actor Cristalino. “Saturn Returns” screened in competition in Malaga, where Lacuesta and Isa Campo, double San Sebastian Golden Shell winners, won the best director Silver Biznaga for their 2016 mystery drama “The Next Skin.” Speaking to Variety, Lacuesta explains how the film is not about Los Planetas but rather about the legend of the band and the mystique they themselves have cultivated over the years. Indeed, the story of “Saturn Return” is largely based on the band’s songs.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Madrid-based Latido Films has snagged international sales rights to Isaki Lacuesta’s “Saturn Return” (“Segundo premio”) and plans to kick off pre-sales at the Cannes market. Currently shooting in Granada, the semi-biopic is set during the ‘90s when the Andalusian city was ground zero for an outburst of cultural effervescence, with the pioneering rock band Los Planetas at the center of it. The film focuses on the creative process behind the recording of their iconic third album, which also took them to New York. Latido likens “Saturn Return” to “24 Hour Party People,” the2002 British biographical dramedy about Manchester’s influential music scene, which spawned such bands as Factory Records’ Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays.  

Emiliano De Pablos Madrid-based Zeta Studios, the producer behind worldwide hit series “Élite,” HBO Max’s “García!,” Movistar Plus’ “Reyes de la noche” and Prime Video’s “Días Mejores,” has teamed with double San Sebastián Golden Shell winner director Isaki Lacuesta for TV drama project “El hijo del chófer” (“The Chauffeur’s Son”). Lacuesta will direct and write the series alongside writer-director Isa Campo, and “Días mejores” creator and “Fariña” scribe Cristóbal Garrido. The project is currently in a development and looking for financing.

Caitlin Quinlan “Vive le cinéma!” goes the call from Tabakalera, International Centre of Contemporary Culture, at this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF).  The Centre’s exhibition hall plays host to four cinematographic installations made by leading global filmmakers, a project which sees them transform their usual cinema-based practice into a more expansive and experimental gallery space.  The exhibition at Tabakalera marks a continuation of the series which began at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam last year in collaboration with the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Two works from the 2021 exhibition by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese and Jia Zhang-ke will be on display again in San Sebastián, alongside two new productions from Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili (“Beginning”) and Spanish director Isaki Lacuesta (“One Year, One Night”). 

A couple struggles to process the aftermath of the Bataclan terrorist attack in One Year, One Night (Un Ano, Una Noche), an affecting Berlin Film Festival competition title from Spanish director Isaki Lacuesta (Between Two Waters). Inspired by a book from Ramón González entitled Peace, Love and Death Metal, it’s based on recollections from real survivors of the 2015 attack in Paris, and the level of detail is compelling.

Emiliano De Pablos Post-COVID, Spanish sales companies look poised for a comeback to the global scene. Although, as Berlin’s EFM has gone virtual once again, their long-awaited physical reunion with the international industry will have to wait until Cannes… hopefully.An argument for optimism: Spanish-language films continue gaining ground on the global market, especially as platforms boom.