Why talk about television in Spain at the biggest Spanish world film festival? One of the reasons: in 2024, San Sebastián welcomed the world’s primary worlds of Movistar Plus + original series “Querer” and “Celeste”, which both won the two largest prices in the 2025 series, Mania, the most important European television festival.
In addition, the Spanish operator Pay-TV / SVOD Moviestar Plus + and Netflix, both in force in San Sebastián of this year, are the two companies that have moved the most of the needle in Spanish film production in the past five years.
Like other major television companies – think that Fremantle – Movistar Plus + and Netflix both penetrate the production of films. The results and companies will generate many most prominent films of this year festival and some of its main discussion points.
Movistar Plus announced its first list of cinematographic originals in January 2024, with the first spectacular results. Playing in Cannes, the main competition, “Sirât” by Oliver Laxe, gleaned complimentary criticism, was acquired for North America by Neon, won the Cannes jury prize and, managed by the Factory match, has now sold on all the main markets.
In Spain, “sirât” was released June 6 by bteam pictures and had big a robust € 2.7 million ($ 3.2 million) by Sept. 7. The Movistar Plus+ Upcoming Production Slate included Next Films from Pedro Almodóvar (“Bitter Christmas”), Rodrigo Sorogoyen (“The Beloved,” Starring Javier Bardem) and Javier Ambrosii and Javier Calvo (“La Bola Negra”, with Penelope Cruz).
Two other Movistar Plus + titles – “Los Tigres” by Alberto Rodríguez and “Sunday” by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa – represent half of the four Spanish contenders Competition Gold Shell in San Sebastian.
“We have created a hybrid model: we are a broadcaster, but we support theatrical races and co -producers with independent producers, allowing normally complicated access to finance,” explains Guillermo Farré, Movistar Plus + chief of original films and Spanish cinema.
A Spain’s film production of Netflix, the “Society of the Snow” by Ja Bayona, is still ranking as a third non -English -speaking world film from Netflix, with 98.5 million views. Having ordered Spanish films one to two each half year in the second half from 2022 to 2024, Netflix Spain ordered five films in the first half 2025, estimates the Ampère analysis. “There is a change marked towards the films [early] 2025 compared to first -race television broadcasts, ”comments the guy from Ampère Bisson. In Latin America, cinema orders went from four to the end of 2023, when operators in general withdrew due to the Hollywood strike action, eight in the second half of 2024 and six in the first six months of 2025.
This shows in San Sebastián where Netflix films have secured their best real estate in the festival. The Basque festival opens with the film Argentin Netflix “27 Nights”, directed by Daniel Hendler (“A Loose End”). Another characteristic of Netflix, “Limpia”, of the Dominga Sotomayor of Chile (“too late to die young”), embodies the Latinos Horizontes of San Sebastian, one of the most important side bars of the festival. The Spanish title Netflix Spanish “She Walks in Darkness” plays the competition.
The main subject of discussion of the festival seems to be lit in the future of Movistar Plus +, under the new management of Top Management. Pushed by the original Domingo Corral fiction manager, the player Pay TV / SVOD, belonging to Telefonic emerged from 2017 as a leading content investor, producing 10-11 series per year of often enormous artistic ambition.
Now under the new CEO Daniel Domenjó, Movistar Plus + is fighting to rely on and extend beyond what Corral, the former CEO Cristina Burzako, and the former president of Sergio Oslé have created.
“Movistar Plus + has its own marked and consolidated brand of first -rate products.
Movements in this direction have already been carried out. “Sunday” is a classic arthouse, a deep dive in complex contemporary ethics. “Los Tigres”, on the other hand, is Rodríguez’s biggest film to date, “a very personal film about the precariousness of a certain working class in Europe, its lack of prospects, and at the same time a very entertaining thriller, against the Narco trade, a very open film”, explains Farré.
“We need subscribers, viewers and making more noise, opening in formats and genres like entertainment, where we are not for the moment,” explains Domenjó. Entertainment could be “above all”, reality TV shows, a “fiction hybrid / doc, say, where we can remain faithful to our brand but innovate”.
Movistar Plus + viewers distort older adults, explains Jorge Pezzi, director of fiction and alliances of Movistar Plus, quoting as an early example of a piece for a younger audience “is yours than Morir Mucha Gente”, adapting a novel by Victoria Martín, one of the most prominent YouTube and Podcast actors in Spain.
Movistar Plus + can play several rear winds on the market. He always grows. Movistar Plus +, a version broadcast from its basic salary television level at a price of € 9.99 ($ 11) helped the company display net additions to thousands of figures per quarter since the second quarter of 2024, observes Maria Rua Aguete at Omdia. “Movistar’s growth is particularly notable given the broader trend of the drop in wage television across Europe,” she adds.
It also benefits from a fruitful alliance of the title by title with Arte France. Their last co-production, “Anatomy of at times”, is an incisive mini-series and biting portrait of the three figures which clashed against the military coup of Spain in 1981. Also produced by Alberto Rodríguez, it is formed as one of the greatest Buzz titles in San Sebastián this year.
Movistar Plus + can also play a much more fluid international television company which allows divided rights and window offers, allowing large games but controlled investments. “Production with Netflix or Amazon Prime Video? Why not? We already talked with them and they are very, very receptive,” explains Domenjó, also stressing that Movistar Plus + has already sold its original season 3 “Muertos” to broadcast on Netflix.
