Spain Showcase

Spanish filmmakers have gained a remarkable international presence, captivating audiences around the world with their innovative approaches and compelling narratives. Each of the projects we present in this edition of Cannes Docs embodies this spirit, showcasing diverse themes and perspectives that resonate on a global scale. Let’s celebrate the power of documentary storytelling and the vibrant talent that Spain has to offer!

Find out more about the 2025 projects!

Projects

Cannes Docs

If You Wish to Make an Apple Pie

Directed by: Nagore ECEIZA

Produced by: Nagore Eceiza | El Santo Films, Spain, Izaskun Arandia | Izar Films, Spain, Manuel Pereira | Cabiria Films, Spain

Country of production: Spain

Runtime: 70' / 55'

Expected release: May 2026

Production stage: Production

Budget: €333,000 (80% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, sales agents, distributors, buyers, gap financing, strategic guidance

Synopsis:

After eight years of clandestine interfaith love with her Hindu partner, circumstances force Muslim artist Dorine to return to her family. She is forced to adapt to the strict discipline imposed by her father, a fervent practitioner of Islam, for whom the mere act of drawing a human form is considered a transgression.

Director’s Profile:

Producer, director, editor, and DOP. She founded El Santo Films in 2022, after a ten-year professional career as a freelancer, during which she has trained with internationally renowned artists and worked with professionals from a wide variety of fields in the audiovisual industry.

Closely identified with the social documentary genre, she has participated in film productions in Newfoundland, the Ecuadorian Amazon, Cape Verde, Paris, Algeria, Israel, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Mexico, India, and Puerto Rico. She is currently touring festivals with the short film “Wao Zone”, awarded eight international awards to date. She is currently directing and co-producing “If You Wish to Make an Apple Pie”, her feature-length debut, which will be released in 2026. She is also co-producing the feature-length documentary “Before You, My Shadow”, by director Natxo Leuza, which is currently in development.

Producer’s Profile:

Founder of IZAR Films, a film production company based in San Sebastián since 2013. The company specializes in films about human rights and social issues, and they work mainly with women filmmakers. The technical teams are also made up of at least 50% women.
IZAR Films is currently developing the documentary feature film “If You Wish to Make an Apple Pie” in production stage and “Irailak”, a documentary feature film in development stage where she is Director and Producer.

Cannes Docs

La pietà

Directed by: Pepe Andreu, Rafa Molés

Produced by: Pepe Andreu, Rafa Molés | SUICAfilms, Spain, Olafur Rognvaldsson | AXfilms, Iceland, Arūnas Matelis | Studio Nominum, Lithuania

Country of production: Spain, Iceland, Lithuania

Runtime: 80'

Expected release: November 2025

Production stage: Editing

Budget: €392,890 (90 % in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, sales agents, buyers, gap financing

Synopsis:

Seven siblings isolated themselves at the beginning of the past Century at the foot of Europe’s largest glacier. They explored and worshipped it before anyone talked about the melt. Their farm is now an empty skeleton. But their voice will echo again like a litany, like a warning. On the wall, the image of a ‘pietà’, with the great white shroud twisted over the corpse of the dying son.

Director’s Profile:

Rafa Molés is a director, scriptwriter and producer. Graduate in Information Sciences. Journalist of the year’ award in the III Edition of the Journalism Awards of the Valencian Community. Lecturer in the Department of Communication Sciences at the Jaume I University of Castellón until 2017. His films include “Lobster soup” (2020), selected in San Sebastian, Thessaloniki, Visions du Réel, ZagrebDox, Calgary, Taipei, Tehran, Dok.fest Munich, Transylvania, RIFF Reykjavik, among others; “Picotazos contra el cristal” (2019), premiered at the Madrid International Film Festival; “Experiment Stuka” (2018), selected at DocsValencia and DocsBarcelona; among others.

Co-director’s Profile:

Pepe Andreu is a film director, scriptwriter and filmmaker from Elche. Graduate in Information Sciences (Image and Sound). He has more than 25 years of professional experience as a television director as well as directing documentaries for film and television. Since 2013 he has also been a producer at SUICAfilms. His films include “Lobster soup” (2020), selected in San Sebastian, Thessaloniki, Visions du Réel, ZagrebDox, Calgary, Taipei, Tehran, Dok.fest Munich, Transylvania, RIFF Reykjavik, among others; “Picotazos contra el cristal” (2019), premiered at the Madrid International Film Festival; “Experiment Stuka” (2018), selected at DocsValencia and DocsBarcelona; among others.

Producer’s Profile:

Pepe Andreu and Rafa Molés started to produce together in 2013 in SUICAfilms. They have worked in documentary as well as fiction. Their films include “El Agua” (2022) by Elena López Riera, “Lobster Soup” (2020) by Pepe Andreu and Rafa Molés, or “La Mort de Guillem” (2018) by Carlos Marques-Marcet, among many others.

The award-winning director Arūnas Matelis (Directors Guild of America, IDFA, etc.) has produced more than 50 documentaries, including “Before Flying Back to Earth” (2006), IDFA (winner), Dok Leipzig (winner); or “Wonderful Losers: A Different World” (2017), Warsaw (winner), Minsk (winner), Trieste (winner).

The producer, director, and cinematographer Ólafur Rögnvaldsson founded, with the screenwriter Anna Th. Rögnvaldsdóttir, in Reykjavík in 1991, AXfilms. He has been involved in some of the country’s most important fiction feature films, fiction series, and documentaries.

Cannes Docs

The Flight of the Stork

Original title: El Vol del la Cigonya

Directed by: Soumaya Hidalgo DJjahdou, Berta Vicente Salas

Produced by: Matheus Mello | Migranta Films, Spain

Country of production: Spain, Qatar

Runtime: 71'/ 52'

Expected release: August 2025

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: €104,043 (65% in place)

Looking for: Festivals (premieres), sales agents, distributors, buyers, broadcasters, co-producers, gap financing, strategic guidance (for festivals strategy)

Synopsis:

Seeking her roots, 29-year-old Soumaya travels to Algeria, filming her quest to understand the past her mother left behind. Through family archives and intimate conversations, she confronts her identity and traditions. What begins as a personal search becomes a poignant look at exile, family bonds, and three generations of women striving for connection across distance and belief

Director’s Profile:

Soumaya Hidalgo Djahdou (Barcelona, ​​1994) is a multicultural artist, translator, and teacher. Her work bridges cultures. Inspired by her grandmother’s disappearing Berber dialect, she conducts family research that evolved into her first documentary, “The Flight of the Stork.” She holds a degree in German and English translation and interpretation from Pompeu Fabra University.

Co-director’s Profile:

Berta Vicente Salas (Barcelona, ​​1994), a Pulitzer Center alumna, is a filmmaker and photographer renowned for her evocative and melancholic photography that blends reality and imagination. Known for her intimate portraits that capture profound emotions, her work conveys introspection and nostalgia. She holds a degree in Humanities (UOC) and a Master’s in Documentary Film from EICTV, Cuba. She was awarded Fototalentos by the Santander Foundation (2013) and received the Sony World Photography Awards (2013) in the youth portrait category. She made her first short film, “Todos los días Elisa,” at EICTV Cuba. “The Flight of the Stork.” will be her first feature-length documentary.

Producer’s Profile:

Matheus Mello (1986), non-binary producer and founder of Migranta Films with over a decade experience, develops bold audiovisual projects and industry initiatives between Brazil and Spain, fostering fairer co-productions across the Global North and South.

With a portfolio spanning films, immersive experiences, and international collaborations, productions such as I Am (IDFA Special Jury Prize) and Kalunga (Best Latin American Short at Kinoforum) and projects like “the Dreams of Time,” “Scorpionikas,” and “Hold Time for Me” have been showcased at Cinemart, EFM, Visions du Réel, Durban Filmart, Atlas Ateliers Marrakesh, D’A Lab, Cinema Pendent, GZDOC, among others.

Collaborations include work with Lucrecia Martel, Pedro Costa, and Werner Herzog on talent development programs. A Sundance Institute, Creative Producer Indaba, and Ji.hlava Emerging Producers alumnus.

Cannes Docs

We Were a Great Family

Original title: Éramos una gran família

Directed by: Cristina Rosselló, Chiara Marañón, Juan Soto Taborda

Produced by: Ricard SALES | LaCima Producciones, Spain)

Country of production: Spain, Colombia

Runtime: 85'

Expected release: June 2025

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: € 364.168,45 (89% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, sales agents

Synopsis:

Miquelina, Josep, and later their son Pattet film their lives between 1942 and 1999, with no other purpose than to create future memories. Unknowingly, they capture the essence of the 20th century: everyday life shaped by Francoism, a camera that changes hands, a dictatorship transforming into a democracy, and images filled with aspirations, contradictions, and dreams of change.

Director’s Profile:

Cristina Rosselló is a film and TV editor with a solid career in the Spanish audiovisual industry. A graduate in Audiovisual Communication from the Complutense University of Madrid, she has strong expertise in narrative, editing, and post-production. Currently at LaCima Producciones, she was previously at AMC Networks (2016–2024), editing for Canal Decasa and other TV projects. As a freelancer, she has edited videos for Skeyndor and fashion films for GQ, Esquire, and L’Officiel Hommes. She edited the trailer for “Quest” (La Perifèrica Produccions), pilots like “Ovo” (Globomedia), “Crush” (Phileas), and “Una y No Más” (Netflix). She has also worked on “El Chiringuito de Pepe”, “Feis tu Feis” (Mediapro), “J Kramer” (Notodofilmfest), “Otro Verano” (Mirabal Films), “Plaza de España” (Hillvalley), and “Muchachada Nui”

Co-Director’s Profile: 

Chiara Marañón is a filmmaker and Director of Programming at MUBI. She holds two master’s degrees in Screenwriting (EICTV Cuba) and Filmmaking (University of Westminster). She has served on juries at Mar del Plata, Jeonju, Documenta Madrid, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and FDC Colombia. As a director, she worked with Abbas Kiarostami and has been mentored by Lucrecia Martel, Carlos Reygadas, and Jaime Rosales. Her films include “Niños en Piscina”, “La Chica de la Fábrica de Limones”, and “The Boy Who Never Went Ice Skating”.”

“Juan Soto Taborda is a director, editor, and archivist. Trained at EICTV, he has edited 40+ projects and works at Filmoteca de Catalunya. He teaches at EICTV, UCL, and Kingston, and is a member of multiple Colombian film institutions. He won Best Editing at Black Canvas (2020) and edited “El Father Plays Himself”. His films include “Revelaciones” and “Parábola del Retorno”.

Producer’s Profile:

Ricard Sales Lacima holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from Ramon Llull University and a Master’s in Executive Production from the School of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts of the Community of Madrid. In 2016, he co-founded LaCima Producciones, where he works as an Executive Producer. He has produced acclaimed films such as “Afternoons of Solitude” (2024 – Golden Shell at San Sebastián), “The Year of the Discovery” (2020 – Two Goya Awards), “Ummo: The Alien Spain” (2022), “Where Were You When You Were?” (2025), and “God’s Hill” (2019). His productions have been recognized at prestigious festivals such as Rotterdam, Seville, Mar del Plata, and Sitges. He is currently producing projects including “Elena Gave Birth to a Beautiful Child”, “From Dawn to Dawn”, “Dancing with Death”, and “The Reserve”