Rodrigo Sorogoyen unpacks Movistar Plus+ series ‘The New Years’

Because Spanish TV production is strong and largely able to withstand the drop in commissions that is affecting most of the world, Mipcom will see few new series launched with a higher profile than ‘The New Years’ by Rodrigo Sorogoyen (‘Los años nuevos’).

A Movistar Plus+ Original, produced with Caballo Films (“La Ruta”, “The Wailing”), the fast-rising Sorogoyen production label that Madrid co-founded, in collaboration with Arte France. “The New Years” follows Sorogoyen’s “The Beasts,” which made him one of Europe’s youngest top filmmakers.

Few other directors will have won a César for Best Foreign Film, as ‘The Beasts’ won in 2023, beating four winners of the 2022-2023 Cannes Festival competition: ‘Triangle of Sadness’, ‘EO’, ‘Close’ and ‘Boy from Heaven. ” Not that many in France will have made 2.5 million dollars from a Spanish-language film, and in Spain an extraordinary 6.8 million euros, despite the artistic ambition.

Sold outside Spain and France by Movistar Plus+ International, “The New Years” had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August, alongside new series from Alfonso Cuarón, Thomas Vinterberg and Joe Wright. Many Spanish critics have praised it as the Spanish series of the year.

“The Beasts,” a neo-Western take on conflict negotiations, offered two contrasting parts. Made with Sara Cano (“Angela”) and Paula Fabra (“A Private Affair”), “The New Years” also plays with structure. Cinema, Sorogoyen points out, “The New Years” will be shown in its entirety at the Valladolid Film Festival and then released in Spanish cinemas in Spain before being shown on Movistar Plus+ from November 28. The series consists of two parts of five episodes without credit crawls. nor intertitles between episodes. Each episode follows Ana (Iría del Río, “Riot Police”) and Oscar (Francesco Carril, “Galgos”) from New Year’s Eve 2015, when they meet, only to be caught on the same day every year for the next ten years.

That structure “allows you to consider change,” Movistar Plus+ director of fiction and entertainment Domingo Corral said at Series Mania, announcing the partnership with Arte France.

‘The New Years’ questions the extent to which people change or redeem their inner demons as it posits a common relationship paradox: the same disparate qualities that attract Ana and Oscar to each other – her spontaneity, ability to live in the moment, are stability – also threaten to derail their relationship. Sorogoyen brings a sense of subgenre to a series where each episode varies in tone, from the couple’s adorable meeting (episode 1) to the recognition of love (episode 2) to rom-com (episode 3), family drama (episode 3). 4), and a horror-tinged breakup (episode 5), and then five episodes after that, one from his point of view (episode 6), another from hers (episode 7) as they contemplate getting back together.

Yet, Sorogoyen points out, “The New Year” starts about a couple and ends about life: friends fade, a parent dies, there are babies, couples break up.

Episodes are shot with a fundamental naturalism and Sorogoyen’s signature tendency to climax shots in succession in a virtuoso EP. 10 single shots of 40 minutes.

Variety spoke with Sorogoyen ahead of the Spanish premiere of “The New Years” in Valladolid, where the series could be one of the main highlights of the festival.

“The New Years” is a series that plays on the possibility of ellipses between episodes, but the style is entirely cinematic….

TV allows us to make longer films. To me, “The New Years” is a film similar to “The Best of Youth”, split into two films, here 180 and 220 minutes. Some TV series continue to reach the required running time. In our case there is a very precise scenario, which has really been worked on so that this does not happen, so that every minute counts.

The film records key moments in a relationship, such as the shock of breakup, the pure pleasure and ease of being together in the first bloom of love, or the first symptoms of tension…

We talked a lot about the key moments we had to achieve, but they aren’t necessarily in the series. Each episode lasts a maximum of 24 hours, so there are 364 days between this one and the next. So we had to do nine more scenarios about what happens in them, and a lot of the key moments happen between one episode and the next, like between episode 3 and episode 4, when they start living together. The viewer doesn’t see it, but can imagine it and register the consequences days or months later in episode 4. It’s quite difficult to have a key moment in a relationship take place on New Year’s Eve. This was a handicap, but fun to take on that challenge.

The episodes vary greatly in tone, pace…

The [overriding] the tone is naturalistic or at least verosimilic. But we wanted the episodes to be different. Yes, for example, in the fourth one their families are eating New Year’s Eve dinner and five people are talking the whole time, and the next one, set in Berlin, is about an outer and inner journey and one of silences. . We wanted each episode to have its own clearly defined personality and setting.

It’s notable that the most developed male characters, Oscar and Guille, are both vulnerable…

We have tried to portray characters that are interesting and today male characters that are interesting have certain sensitivities, insecurities and weaknesses that are more in line with today’s reality.

Another theme is communication, or the lack thereof….

I would say the difficulty of communication. The lack of it is a major reason for conflict between couples.

“The New Years,” which catches characters one day each year, inevitably talks about the passage of time and asks whether people change. And the film’s answer is yes.

Yes, it is inevitable that people grow up and in Ana’s case, that maturity is a life journey where she ultimately finds her place in the world.

Mexican writer-director Guillermo Arriaga once said that you should be able to summarize in a few words what your work is about.

I’m somewhat reluctant to define our work. But I would say that “The New Years” starts about a couple and ultimately becomes about life. You start to believe that you are watching a movie about a boy and a girl who fall in love. You’ll see that in Episodes 1-3, and I hope you enjoy seeing it. But after that the couple is less important and it becomes more about her life and his life, about motherhood and losing loved ones, how friends leave, lose friendships, and how you find or think you will find or ask for your place in the world: ‘What am I doing with my life?’ ‘Should I do something with my life?’