Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.
Global Breakouts hasn’t visited Spain for nearly two years and we felt it was high time we returned… And who better to speak with than Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, the co-creator of Querer, which just scooped the biggest prize going at Series Mania. Querer follows a woman whose life is turned upside down when she accuses her husband of rape and files criminal charges. Movistar Plus+’s searing factual drama has been generating plenty interest outside of Spain.
Name: Querer
Country: Spain
Producers: Movistar Plus+, Kowalski Films, Feelgood Media
International sales: Movistar Plus Internacional
What would you do if your mother accused your father of rape?
That dreadful question was the starting point and generator behind Movistar Plus+’s Querer, the winner of this year’s Series Mania international competition, which was inspired by an “amalgam of real-life cases,” according to creator Alauda Ruiz de Azúa.
“We wanted it to be a series that would generate conversation about the topic of consent,” says de Azúa. “We tend to judge a case of sexual abuse reported in the press differently than one that occurs in our own families. That question was the driving force behind the story.”
In Spain, the show was timely given the debates raging around consent and the media after former soccer federation president Luis Rubiales was found guilty of sexual assault for kissing World Cup winner Jenni Hermoso without her consent.
Shot in the Basque Country, Querer, which loosely translates into English as “want” or “love,” stars Nagore Aranburu as Miren Torres, whose life is turned upside down when she accuses her husband, Íñigo (Pedro Casablanc), of rape and files criminal charges. After 30 years of marriage and two children, her decision shocks family and friends, and her accusations force Miren’s now-adult sons to choose between believing their mother and supporting their father, who claims his innocence. With shades of a previous Global Breakout, New Zealand’s After the Party, the show stars Miguel Bernardeau and Iván Pellicer and was co-created by Eduard Sola and Julia De Paz.
Tonally, Querer was always going to be tricky, with de Azúa saying she wanted to achieve “sobriety, minimalism and simplicity.”
“That sobriety has to do with the fact that I like the actors’ work, and I like it to be at the center of the narrative,” she says. “In Querer, achieving truthful acting was important, but so was the exercise of tension. Instead of building that tension through script tricks, we built it on the difficulty of speaking certain things in a family.”
By taking this approach, de Azúa felt her creative team could explore a topic rarely delved into on TV and in movies. Her main challenge, she explains, was “approaching a story like this and not falling into morbidity, overly simplistic ideas, or clichés.” She felt she had “found my compass” when she decided the viewer would be placed into a position of answering what they would do in the same situation.
De Azúa has dabbled in both film and TV – her movie Lullaby was labeled “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years” by Pedro Almodóvar and her next project is Movistar Plus+ feature Los Domingos – and she says by “using cinematic language in an episodic structure” she took a filmic approach to forging Querer for TV. “Cinematography has to do with vision and language, not with format labels,” she adds.
Susana Herreras, Editorial Director of Original Fiction at Movistar Plus+, says the auteur achieved what she set out to achieve from the start. Herreras was touched by the exploration of consent not in a “simplified, binary way, but in all its emotional, legal, and psychological complexity,” adding, “These are questions being asked everywhere, from Madrid to Los Angeles to Seoul.” This interest extended to the ratings. Querer was one of Movistar Plus+’s top three most-watched shows during the first quarter of this year and continues to clock up views into April, according to the Spanish major.
Series Mania Gong
Querer’s achievement was also recognized by the Series Mania judges led by Jury President Pamela Adlon, who together concurred that the show “skillfully depicts the impact of a revelation on a family” as they gave it the top prize ahead of heavy hitters like Mussolini: Son of the Century, Amanda Seyfried-starrer Long Bright River and Cooper Raiff’s Hal & Harper.
“We always set out to tell a local story with global relevance,” says Herreras. “What we’re seeing now through critical acclaim, festival recognition and international demand is that audiences are hungry for stories that challenge, move and reflect the world we live in.”
According to Herreas, Querer has attracted plenty interest from abroad, for both finished tape (it sold to Arte in France) and also adaptations in other territories including several European countries, which speaks to the story’s universality.
Querer was awarded one of Europe’s biggest small screen prizes at a time when raw creativity feels under threat, with non-commercial projects harder to get off the ground than ever. In Spain, de Azúa believes there is a greater volume of opportunities than yesteryear and streamers are helping get projects off the ground. However, she has “doubts about whether more risks are being taken in production,” and therefore feels “fortunate” that Movistar Plus+ placed a bet on Querer.
A cornerstone of such projects is their ability to pose societal questions that are almost impossibly difficult to answer. Long may auteurs like de Azúa keep posing them.
