31/03/2006

Daniel Sánchez Arévalo's debut feature film DarkBlueAlmostBlack [+see also:
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Produced by Tesela and distributed by Alta Classics, DarkBlueAlmostBlack is the story of Jorge (Quim Gutiérrez), a young man forced to take over his father's job after the latter suffers a stroke. After several years of working hard, caring for his father and finishing college, Jorge now wants to strike out on his own and sees in his brother's girlfriend (2006 Shooting Star Marta Etura) an opportunity to change his life.

"I have always been against melodrama in its purest sense. I was obsessed with the idea of making a film that audiences would see as something positive", explains Sánchez Arévalo, "No matter how hard the lead character’s life is, he manages to overcome a bit of his limitations and live life differently".

After beginning his career as a TV scriptwriter in Madrid, Sánchez Arévalo moved to New York, where he studied film at Columbia University. Back in Spain, his short films made a splash in several festivals, attracting the attention of Julio Medem, who scripted Sánchez Arévalo's 2004 short film The Mountaineer's Fault.

DarkBlueAlmostBlack leads a contingent of three domestic films – including Claudia Llosa's Madeinusa (distributed by Wanda Vision) and Eliseo Subiela's Heartlift (Festival Films) – that open the same day as aspiring blockbuster Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction (Araba Films), US titles Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (Fox) and North Country (Warner Sogefilms), Canada's The Last Sign (Manga Films) and Korean/Japanese co-production Hwal (Golem).