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Exclusive: Paul Auster novel In The Country Of Last Things is getting a Spanish-language movie adaptation from Argentine filmmaker Alejandro Chomski (Asleep In The Sun).

Shoot is underway at Pinewood Dominican Republic Studios on the feature starring Argentine newcomer Jazmín Diz, Mexican actor-singer Christopher Von Uckermann and Maria De Medeiros (Pulp Fiction). Funding comes from Caribbean outfit Lantica. Above is a first look at Diz in the film.

Set in a devastated city that was once a thriving metropolis, the dystopian story follows Anna (Diz) who is searching for her brother, a journalist who is missing. In her quest to find him, she meets and falls in love with Sam (Von Uckermann), another journalist. Chomski adapted Auster’s novel, which has been translated into more than forty languages.

Producers on the long-gestating project, which was originally developed as an English-language film, are Alexandra Stone of UK-based Streetcar Productions, Capa Pictures...

Despite even more outlets, thanks to the arrival of global streaming giants, Spanish sales agents and producers are caught in a current double-bind.

Sales to Netflix are diminishing, as it drives more into original production, but bullish theatrical distribution at home and abroad remains restricted to high-profile auteurs, big-budget productions or breakout titles.

In international, “a culture of fear has set in: independent distributors fear that smaller films don’t have a theatrical public,” says Antonio Saura of Spanish sales shingle Latido.

Both overseas and in Spain’s market, “average, mid-range movies no longer work,” says Mercedes Gamero of production house Atresmedia Cine. “Either you have real auteur-driven movies or big blockbusters.”

There’s an onus on originality. “It’s no longer about budgets but titles that impact, have something special,” whether that’s the cast or an novel concept or idea, says Iván Díaz at production and sales shingle Filmax.

It isn’t hard to imagine the kind of sexy 1970s pastiche that filmmakers Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas set out to make with Holy Beasts (La Fiera y la Fiesta). The goal was certainly a campy, tongue-in-cheek fictional film-within-a-film in honor of flamboyant filmmaker, writer and theatrical producer Jean-Louis Jorge (a real person), who was an active member of the trendy '70s underground scene — think Warhol, think Studio 54, think European version of the above. He became a legend in Santo Domingo on the strength of his eccentric B-movies, until his work was cut short when he ...

It isn’t hard to imagine the kind of sexy 1970s pastiche that filmmakers Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas set out to make with Holy Beasts (La Fiera y la Fiesta). The goal was certainly a campy, tongue-in-cheek fictional film-within-a-film in honor of flamboyant filmmaker, writer and theatrical producer Jean-Louis Jorge (a real person), who was an active member of the trendy '70s underground scene — think Warhol, think Studio 54, think European version of the above. He became a legend in Santo Domingo on the strength of his eccentric B-movies, until his work was cut short when he ...

Berlin — “Holy Beasts” begins memorably with a shot of an inky sea, as black as death. Surveying it is Vera, played by Geraldine Chaplin, an actress who travels to the Dominican Republic to shoot the unfinished film of real-life Dominican director Jean-Louis Jorge, who died in 2000.

Vera is most probably dying. This will certainly be her last film, she tells its producer.”Holy Beasts” is a step up in scale for its directors, Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas. Shot at the island’s Pinewood Dominican Republic Studios and extraordinarily plush Casa de Campo Resort, “Holy Beasts” records the bathetic happenstance of movie shoots, the tight budgets and schedules, the accidents, the conflict of creative will. Above all, however, the film turns on Vera who asks what matters and mattered in her life: Her answers, respectively, her grandson and Jean-Louis. Shooting his film may rescue not only Jean-Louis from oblivion but be,...