Variety
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Latido Films has acquired rights from A Contracorriente Films to represent international sales on “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés,” the first feature as a director of Antón Álvarez, better known as C. Tangana, his stage name as a singer-songwriter.
A Contracorriente Films, which has bought world rights to the doc feature, will release “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés” in Spain on Dec. 20.
The deal marks one of the key sales rights pick-ups on one of the films which is building strong word of mouth and anticipation before its world premiere at San Sebastian Film Festival, thanks to press and private screenings.
Highlighted to Variety by Jose Luis Rebordinos as a “great doc feature” and part of an exciting build in non-fiction in Spain, “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés” has been selected to open San Sebastian’s New Directors, its biggest sidebar.
It also marks one of the most ambitious works to date of Little Spain, a Los Angeles-based creative boutique behind “This Excessive Ambition,” directed by Santos Bacana, Cristina Trenas and Rogelio González, and catching C. Tangana creating and tiring with “El Madrileno.”
As a rapper, and then ever more a singer-songwriter and composer, who has won nine Latin Grammy Awards, Alvarez, who co-wrote Rosalía’s “Antes de Morirme” and achieved worldwide fame with “El Madrileño,” demonstrated visual flair and “modern pop nous,” said The Guardian, co-writing and directing the music video of “Oliveira Dos Cen Anos,” a centennial hymn for soccer club Celta de Vigo, possibly “the most artistically ambitious football anthem ever,” said The Guardian. The vid clip went on to win three Cannes Golden Lions.
When he came to directing “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés,” “I thought I knew some things about directing, but I wasn’t sure about the narrative,” Álvarez told Variety.
The story came, however, with Cortés, the rising star of Spain’s flamenco scene. Álvarez met him at a party, where he played guitar for singer Montse Cortés, just as Elon Musk’s Starlight satellites raced across Madrid’s night time sky, like shooting stars. As a guitarist, Cortés is “refined, discreet, different. He’s making an album, which though a guitar album, “talks about his life, his family, and about a sorrow, which he wants to tell to the world. I ask him: Does the album have a title? He says: Yes, ‘The Flamenco Guitar of Yerai Cortés,’” Álvarez recounts to camera in an early scene of the film.
The doc feature was originally conceived as a record of Cortés composing and playing the album’s songs. Some, performed in the film, are spectacular set pieces: “Plaza Argel,” bulerías performed in Alicante’s Plaza Argel, where Cortés played as a kid; the celebratory “Los gitanos somos así;” another bulería, “Es tanto lo que me callo,” sung by Cortés’ aunt, Remedios Amaya.
But as Álvarez meets his family, his father Miguel, his mother María, the film drives deeper to the heart of sadness. The film is structured as a mystery drama. For much of its running time, it seems that Cortes’ sorrow is at his parents’ separation, that they don’t even talk to each other. But there’s something else, far more touchingly tragic. Its gradual revelation drives the film, which becomes a delicate act of remembrance.
“This extraordinary picture represents the transformation of a world music star like C. Tangana into a brilliant filmmaker,” Latido Films head Antonio Saura told Variety. “His approach to the art and life of Yerai Cortés is proof that we are in the presence of an amazing cineaste. This movie not only displays the astounding music of Yerai, but immerses us in the deep conflicts of a family, that are both universal and very unique, while giving incredible insight into Roma culture in Spain.”
