Between 4 and 5 pm on Thursday 4 March, under the title “Too Cool for School: Spanish Labs & Project-development Platforms” (read more here), the Spanish Film and Audiovisual Arts Institute (ICAA) will gather together the heads of a group of labs, platforms, markets and development programmes for Spanish projects at an online event that forms part of the Berlinale’s European Film Market. In this way, international professionals will be offered the chance to discover a novel way of approaching their search for enticing projects (encompassing all kinds of genres and formats, including series) helmed by innovative, emerging, talented Spanish creators. Those interested in attending the presentation can do so by clicking here.

“We want to introduce the Spanish labs, markets and platforms, and make them popular within the international film landscape, promoting them as events in themselves. We want to place this project-development ecosystem on the global audiovisual map: this is where one can find the most experimental, arthouse or documentary films, for example,” Tito Rodríguez, head of marketing policies at the ICAA, tells Cineuropa. “We would like to invite industry professionals to familiarise themselves with them, as they’re very valuable on the Spanish film scene: they’re hotbeds for projects where sellers, sales agents, distributors and festival selectors can get in touch with the teams behind them at an early stage.”

Moderated by Olimpia Pont Cháfer (head of the industry area at the Seville European Film Festival and TorinoFilmLab), this virtual meeting will see the participation of Annabelle Aramburu (coordinator of MAFIZ/MAFF, the industry strand of the Málaga Film Festival), Maialen Beloki (deputy director of the San Sebastián International Film Festival and coordinator of its Ikusmira Berriak programme for scouting out new talents), Gemma Vidal (head of The Screen - ECAM/La Incubadora programme), José Manuel Zamora (director of the Abycine Film Festival and its industry sidebar, Abycine Lanza), Elena Subirà i Roca (head of institutional relations at Campus DocsBarcelona), Géraldine Gonard (CEO and founder of Conecta Fiction, an Inside Content initiative) and Annamaria Scaramella (general coordinator of the MRG//WORK department at the Márgenes Festival).

“We must underline how valuable these events are on the annual film circuit, as without their support, many titles would be unable to move forward. Some of them even provide projects with their consultation services over a period of 12 months. Because of space and time restraints, not all of the labs that unfold in Spain will be able to be present at this gathering at 4 in the afternoon on Thursday 4 March, but this idea of making them more visible is something that we, at the ICAA, will continue to do at other festivals and markets. We will introduce them all because there are so many of them, and they are very interesting,” sums up Rodríguez.