Agustín Díaz Yanes and Alejandro Amenábar have been born greater than 20 years aside, however they started directing movies on the similar time. The first with No one will discuss us once we are uselessin 1995, and the opposite with Thesisonly a yr later. Two of probably the most excellent debut movies in current Spanish cinematography, acknowledged with eight and 7 Goya awards respectively. Then the cinema was bustling and you possibly can solely see it within the theaters. Three many years after that, with the 2 established as massive names in our cinema and with an trade utterly completely different from the one the place they have been born, each return to the screens after greater than 5 years of absence. This Tuesday they met with the scholars of the fortieth class of the Master of Journalism on the UAM-EL PAÍS School to speak about these manufacturing fashions remodeled by digital platforms and their new jobs: A ghost in battle y The captive.
There are few similarities, a priori, between the inventive imaginative and prescient of each administrators, however they share an extended profession and validity that enables us to higher perceive the brand new functioning of cinema within the twenty first century, more and more swallowed up by digital platforms. Today their function movies are opening as much as new codecs and are available underneath the umbrella of Netflix, which funds a part of The captive in trade for its exclusivity on the platform and produces utterly A ghost in battlewhat they name Netflix authentic—. Models which have ceased to be easy options and have turn out to be common options in giant productions. “Today movies are consumed on the screen a lot. I have never seen some of my favorite movies in a cinema. I like to make movies with whatever budget is needed and that’s it. I don’t care if it goes directly to the platform without going to the cinemas. I want freedom and budget,” Amenábar mentioned as quickly as he started.
The expertise is especially novel for Díaz Yanes —Amenábar had already debuted While the battle lasts y Fortunea miniseries produced by and for Movistar Plus+—, who returns to directing after Oro, launched in 2017. The first venture of a 75-year-old veteran filmmaker, who opens himself to a mannequin like this, distanced him from the standard and compelled his movie to be proven in theaters for under three weeks. “At first I went in with some hesitation, thinking that Netflix might torture me, but they were the only ones interested in the film and I hadn’t directed for many years and I couldn’t say no. Then I had complete creative freedom and, for the first time, I don’t know if it’s good or not, no problem with the budget,” he mentioned.
The end result was a movie with “much more money than expected” and the views of many tens of millions of individuals, absolutely extra, the filmmaker has mentioned, than any of his different movies. “It is very difficult to make films today that reach a budget of 10 million euros. The one we had planned, for example, was much smaller. I would have lost locations, the Italian songs, which are very expensive, and my salary,” he continued.
The similar has attracted Amenábar to the multinational platform. The captive, what receives Netflix with a distinct financing mannequin—solely a portion of the finances in trade for exclusivity within the streaming— had, not like A ghost in battle, an extended presence in theaters, though, the director defined, with out the financing of the platform, it will have remained stagnant: “Mine is a film designed to be exploited in the cinema, but Netflix has allowed us to build the house of cards and probably with the reality of current cinema we would not have been able to make it.”
It is true that each proceed to really feel an attraction for the rooms and, past puritanism, they discover palpable advantages in them. “The rooms at least allow what you have dedicated two or three years of your life to to have much more weight,” mentioned Amenábar. And reaching platforms that host a whole lot of hundreds of audiovisual merchandise carries the big danger of getting misplaced in an immense catalog. “It may be that you go to a platform, they give you the money, and no one sees the film,” Díaz Yanes defined. And Amenábar has complemented: “It can happen to you that you are successful or that your film goes unnoticed.”
Nor has one of many controversies that drags the difficulty most within the trade: the connection of movie academies with these fashions. A relationship that for Díaz Yanes “is going badly.” “I have already said that making a film on Netflix has many benefits, but this weighs,” mentioned the director. His colleague differs: “I think that the debate is rather about what we consider a film suitable for the Goya. And it is a debate that the Oscars or the Golden Globes are having right now. It is a debate in which our films do not enter because they have been in movie theaters, but the Academy protects, like the Academy of Language, the essences.”
Theirs, though nominated for the Spanish movie awards that shall be introduced subsequent month, don’t seem in an important classes of an evening wherein they promise to star. Sirâtby Oliver Laxe and Sundaysby Alauda Ruiz de Azúa. “For me, the interesting thing this year is to see how the Academy is going to choose the winning film. I think it will have a divided heart. I won’t say more,” mentioned Amenábar. A debate that Díaz Yanes didn’t need to enter as a result of he had not seen Laxe’s movie: “I never see movies in which a child dies.” Whichever the winner is, Netflix should wait at the very least one other yr to be the protagonist on the highest of the awards.
https://elpais.com/cultura/cine/2026-01-20/amenabar-y-diaz-yanes-alian-su-cine-a-la-nueva-industria-digital-y-sus-modelos-de-financiacion.html