‘Querer’ Director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa Adds More Big Spanish Auteur Firepower to San Sebastián Competition With Movistar Plus+ Original ‘Sundays’
Spain’s San Sebastián Festival, the biggest film event in the Spanish-speaking world, has added a fourth Spanish title to its main competition: Movistar Plus+ original “Sundays” (“Los domingos”), the latest film from Alauda Ruiz de Azuá.
Ruiz de Azúa turned heads with her first feature, Berlin Panorama player “Lullaby” (“Cinco Lobitos”), an eminently grounded mother-daughter maternity drama which was endorsed by Pedro Almodóvar as “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years.”
Ruiz de Azúa’s first TV series, the family drama/courtroom thriller “Querer,” world premiered to acclaim at San Sebastián last year and went on to take best series in main competition at Lille’s Series Mania, Europe’s premier TV festival.
Co-produced and sold internationally by France’s Le Pacte, “Sundays” presents a family quandary: Ainara, 17, brilliant, and an idealist, just has to choose what she studies at university before going on, foreseeably, to an illustrious career, her family hopes.
Ainara, however, declares that she feels ever closer to God, and is contemplating joining an enclosed religious order.
“Sundays” is set and shot in Ruíz de Azúa’s native Basque Country. Debutant Blanca Soroa plays Ainara. “Sundays” also stars Patricia López Arnaiz, a 2024 San Sebastián acting winner for “Glimmers,” Miguel Garcés (“Querer,” “20,000 Species of Bees,” “Maixabel”), Argentina’s multi-prized Juan Minujín (“The Two Popes,” “El Marginal,” “Zama”), Mabel Rivera, winner of a supporting actress Spanish Academy Goya for “The Sea Inside,” and Nagore Aranburu, star of “Querer.”
When “Sundays” went into production, Movistar Plus+ confirmed that it would be told from two points of view: that of Ainara, who wants to flee the world, and that of Maite, who hopes to convince her niece that the world is still worth living in.
“Movistar Plus+ wants to bet on auteurs with a key vision but also the potential to reach a broad public, and ‘Sundays’ is a case in point,” Guillermo Farré, Movistar Plus+ head of original films & Spanish cinema, said when Variety announced “Sundays.”
“Sundays” is produced by Movistar Plus+, the biggest Spanish pay TV/SVOD operator, as well as Nahikari Ipiña at Sayaka Producciones, Marisa Fernández Armenteros’ Buenapinta Media (“The Mole Agent”), Sandra Hermida at Think Studio and Colosé Producciones (“Society of the Snow”) and Manu Calvo (“Wounded”). BTeam Pictures will distribute in Spain.
Launching a slate of event auteur theatrical features in January 2024, the Movistar Plus+ co-produced “Sirât” directed by Oliver Laxe, which won Cannes Jury Prize in May. “Sundays” joins another Movistar Plus+ Original in San Sebastian’s main competition, Alberto Rodríguez’s “Los Tigres,” an underwater thriller.
Ipiña, Fernández Armenteros, Hermida and Calvo produced “Lullaby.” “Our bet on Alauda’s debut feature allowed us to accompany her on an unforgettable journey, not only in terms of the film’s prizes, reviews and box office but also the bonds of trust and complicity it established,” they said when “Sundays” went into production.
“Now we have the good luck to accompany Alauda with her new film, a story which gripped us when she presented it to us as an idea. We are very happy to accompany her once more in the new adventure,” they added.
