As Spanish TV production remains strong, largely weathering the commission cuts suffered across much of the world, few higher-profile new series will be brought to market on Mipcom than “The New Years” (“Los años nuevos”) by Rodrigo Sorogoyen.
A Movistar Plus + Unique, produced with Caballo Movies (“La Ruta”, “The Wailing”), the fast-growing Madrid production label co-founded by Sorogoyen, in partnership with Arte France, “The New Years” follows “The Sorogoyen’s Beasts” which established him as one of Europe’s youngest A-list filmmakers.
Few other directors would have received the César for Best Foreign Film, as “The Beasts” did in 2023, beating four winners of the 2022-23 Cannes Film Festival: “Triangle of Disappointment”, “EO”, “Calado” and “Garoto do Céu ”. ” Few can have grossed 2.5 million dollars in France with a Spanish-language film, in addition to the unprecedented 6.8 million euros (7.5 million dollars) in Spain, regardless of their inventive ambition.
Offered in Spain and France by Movistar Plus + Worldwide, “The New Years” had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August, alongside new series from Alfonso Cuarón, Thomas Vinterberg and Joe Wright. Many Spanish critics hailed it as the Spanish series of the year.
A neo-Western turn to battle trading, “The Beasts” provided two contrasting elements. Created with Sara Cano (“Angela”) and Paula Fabra (“A Private Affair”), “The New Years” also works with construction. Cinema, Sorogoyen insists, “The New Years” will be shown in full at the Valladolid Film Festival and will then arrive in Spanish cinemas in Spain before debuting on Movistar Plus + from November 28th. credit score tracking nor subtitles between episodes. Each episode updates Ana (Iría del Río, “Shock Police”) and Oscar (Francesco Carril, “Galgos”) from New Year’s Eve 2015 when they first meet, catching them on the same day annually for the following decade. .
This construction “allows us to contemplate change”, said Domingo Corral, Director of Fiction and Leisure at Movistar Plus+, at Collection Mania, affirming the partnership with Arte France.
“The New Years” asks how much people change or rid their inner demons, as it posits a typical relationship paradox: the same divergent qualities that magnetize Ana and Oscar to each other – their spontaneity, their ability to live in the moment, their stability – also threaten to derail your relationship. Sorogoyen brings a kind of subgenre to a series where each episode ranges in tone from the couple’s meet-cute (Ep. 1) to acknowledgment of affection (Ep. 2) to romcom (Ep. 3) to family drama (Ep. . 4) and horror-tinged breakup (Ep. 5), after which five episodes follow, one from his perspective (Ep. 6), another from her perspective (Ep. 7), as they contemplate getting back together.
But, Sorogoyen insists, “The New Year” begins with a couple and ends with life: friends disappear, mother or father dies, there are babies, couples break up.
The episodes are filmed with a fundamental naturalism and Sorogoyen’s characteristic tendency to sequence photographs culminating in a virtuoso Ep. 10 single shots lasting 40 minutes.
Selection spoke with Sorogoyen before the Spanish premiere of “New Year” in Valladolid, where the series promises to be one of the main highlights of the contest.
“The New Years” is a series, taking advantage of the possibility of reticence between episodes, but its style is completely cinematic….
TV allows us to make longer films. For me “The New Years” is a film very similar to “The Better of Youth” divided into two films, here lasting 180 and 220 minutes. Some TV collections continue as a way to achieve the necessary operational size. In our case, there is a very precise script, which has been worked on to ensure that this does not happen, so that every minute counts.
The film records key moments in a relationship, such as the shock of breaking up, the pure fun and ease of being together in the first blossoming of love, or the first signs of pressure….
We talked a lot about the key moments we wanted to hit, but they’re not necessarily in the series. Each episode lasts a maximum of 24 hours, so between this one and the next they last 364 days. So we had to make nine more scripts, about what happens in them and most of the key moments happen between one episode and another, like between Episode 3 and Episode 4, when they start to live together. The viewer doesn’t see it, but they can think about it and record the results days or months later in episode 4. It’s very difficult for a key moment in a relationship to happen on New Year’s Eve. This was a disadvantage, however pleasant it was to go through this trouble.
The episodes vary a lot in tone, rhythm…
The (preponderant) tone is naturalistic or, at least, believable. But we wanted the episodes to be different, yes, the fourth one for example shows their families eating New Year’s Eve dinner and five people talking the whole time, and the next one, set in Berlin, is about an outer and inner journey and a in each of the silences. We wanted each episode to have its own clearly defined character and setting.
It’s notable that the most developed male characters, Oscar and Guille, are fragile…
We try to portray characters that attract attention and directly male characters that attract attention, have a certain sensitivity, insecurities and weaknesses more linked to current reality.
Another theme is communication, or lack thereof….
I would say the problem of communication. The scarcity of this is a big reason for the couple’s conflicts.
Picking up characters once a year, “The New Year” inevitably talks about the passage of time and asks whether people change. And the film’s answer is ‘of course’.
Yes, inevitably people mature and in Ana’s case this maturity is a life journey where she ends up discovering her place in the world.
Mexican writer and director Guillermo Arriaga once said that you should be able to summarize in a few words what your work is about.
I am not reluctant to describe our work. But I would say that “New Year” starts talking about a couple and finally ends talking about life. You start out believing you’re watching a movie about a boy and a woman falling in love. You see that in episodes 1-3 and you’re delighted, I hope, to see that. But after that the couple is less important and it’s more about her life and his, about motherhood and the loss of family, how friends leave, the loss of friendships and how you find your home in the world or imagine you do. or ask: ‘What am I doing with my life?’ ‘Do I have to do something with my life?’