Alvaro Brechner Helms ‘Mägo de Oz., los angeles Película’ a Folks Steel Band Saga

Madrid-based Álvaro Brechner, “one of the vital main South American display screen skills to emerge within the ultimate decade,” Selection wrote in a evaluate of his Venice-selected “A Twelve-12 months Night time,” is hooked up to direct “Mägo de Oz., Los angeles Película” a big-scale bio of the Spanish folks steel band.  

At the back of Cannes Critics’ Week participant “Unhealthy Day to Move Fishing,” gross sales hit “Mr Kaplan” and the Venice-selected “A Twelve-12 months Night time,” all Oscar entries from Uruguay, Brechner will begin primary images on March 17. He’s going to shoot in Madrid, the Canary Island of Gran Canaria and Mexico Town with a global Spanish-language forged together with Spain’s Adrián Lastra (“Velvet”) and Roberto Álamo (“Revolt Police”) and Mexico’s Michelle Renaud (“Malvada”) and Michael Ronda (“Cuando sea joven”).

The film is produced by way of on-the-rise Spanish outfit Eterno Island Photos, a subsidiary of El Sueño Eterno Photos (“El Largo Viaje”). It’s written by way of Sofía Cuenca, a co-scribe on “My Fault,” proclaimed by way of Top Video quickly after its release in 2023 because the provider’s hottest non-English language film ever.

Mägo de Ounceshas printed over 20 albums, promoting north of two million copies and scoring a Latin Grammy nomination. 

“From its humble beginnings within the ‘80s to global consecration, the movie delves into the ingenious tensions, victories, polemics and defeats which solid its essence,” the synopsis says. “Additionally, it’ll plumb the gang’s inside dynamics, its lovers’ unbreakable devotion, appearing how its tune impacted complete generations,” it added.

Based by way of drummer Txus de Fellatio (performed by way of Lastra) in 1988, Mägo de Ouncesthe band stands proud for its fusion of heavy and gear steel and Celtic folks, violinist Mohamed “Moha”  (the musician Guillermo Furiase) becoming a member of in 1992 and Fernando Ponce de León (Marc Parejo, “Acacias 38”) boarding in 1999 to play flute, whistles, gaita and bagpipes.

Additionally exceptional is the large choice of musicians who’ve handed throughout the bands ranks. A written remark issued Tuesday lists 10 key forged actors. Álamo performs Spain-based Chilean manufacturer and musician Giant Simon, a the most important affect on Mägo de Ouncesin its early years; Rennaud limns Patricia Tapia, its largest feminine vocalist; Ronda will take at the function of Frank, “whose creativity used to be the most important for the unique sound,” the remark mentioned. 

“The venture marks a earlier than and after for us,” mentioned manufacturer Patricia González, additionally CEO of El Sueño Eterno Photos. “This selection is the fruit of an exhaustive immersion within the band’s global, looking to seize and produce to the large display screen its mythical tune and the essence of the band individuals,” she added.

Prep took in “cautious interviews with workforce individuals, a deep find out about of its writer and the band’s creative building and a meticulous manufacturing design,” mentioned González. 

The movie’s soundtrack will likely be composed by way of Txus di Fellatio and Mohamed who can even create authentic tracks for the movie and supervise the inclusion at the soundtrack of the band’s biggest hits.

Pedro Díaz “Peri” serves as government manufacturer. “As a member of the Mago de Ouncess massive circle of relatives, it’s all the time been an issue of pleasure for me so that you could lend a hand propagate rock tradition to part the arena,” he mentioned. 

Selection talked to Brechner about “Mägo de Oz., Los angeles Película.”  

What attracted you to “Mägo de Oz.”?

The problem. It’s an enormous venture taking in many stuff and is the primary movie from a screenplay I didn’t write, elevating the query of the way I may just combine my very own sensibility, sense of drama and humor. And the gang’s power took me again – the nostalgia gave me goose-pimples, used to be stomach-churning – to my 15 year-old-self, a heavy rock fan, to an international the place I performed tune at complete quantity, proving my oldsters’ endurance. 

The band noticed more than one iterations, conflicts….

Sure, aside from taking pictures its power, what draws me maximum is the size of its characters who’re deeply human, very singular, advanced. Every band member fought their very own combat, with hobby and a way of vulnerability. [The film will show] their ambitions and defeats and a seek for popularity, friendship and redemption.    

Mexican writer-director Guillermo Arriaga as soon as mentioned that you just must be capable of sum up in a couple of phrases what your paintings is set.

It’s a couple of workforce of people that have a dream which turns into fact, which means they’re getting ready to shedding the entirety and need to reinvent themselves. It asks the way you pass on while you succeed in a dream, although it approach shedding the entirety. How do you stay the essence of who you might be? Any band that’s a hit opens the door to extra, self-destruction. Continuously our goals’ largest enemy is ourselves. Mägo de Ouncess tale is especially singular in unfolding in a Hispanic context in Spain, the place the band lives its daily lifestyles in Madrid. It’s as though it marks us aside from U.S. and U.Okay. bands. 

Is there one thing about bands which creates inside warfare? Possibly the restricted alternatives to precise one’s personal creativity?

It’s one thing that fascinates me. How an entity can succeed in a creativity and a way of its personal, whilst being made up of more than a few band individuals. It’s now not a case of 1 plus one or a sum of its portions. Its portions, the band individuals, are built-in. Mägo de Ouncess individuals stay on converting, musicians come and pass, however the band’s id survived, reaching a type of independence in itself…..

In what approach would you sense that this will likely be a movie by way of Álvaro Brechner? 

It’s lovely smartly inconceivable for a director to not give off a way of his personal imaginative and prescient, in my case a humorousness, of drama and love, and different components reminiscent of delusion: the variation between what we dream, what we wish to be or consider we’re and what we’re.  

You mentioned it’s an enormous movie…..

On account of its a lot of forged, the years it covers, the large center the movie has and its massive narrative – that claims numerous issues all the way through a very long time now not with regards to the band however non-public issues about its individuals and issues about Spain. And have you ever attempted to shoot 10 musicians taking part in in combination on a level? That’s a problem in itself.