Movistar+ Evolves Its Theatrical Feature Division

No company has a more powerful spread of productions at this year’s San Sebastian Festival than Telefónica’s domestic platform and super-producer Movistar Plus+. The group brings a festival competition movie, “I’m Nevenka,” a premium drama series, “Querer,” a broad audience thriller series, “Celeste” and “Mugaritz,” a documentary feature about Spain’s most cerebral restaurant.

The diverse projects underscore Movistar Plus+’s muscular new content initiatives as the company drives ever more into nonfiction, emerging as Spain’s leader, and launching its first movie slate in January. Spain’s biggest national investor isn’t pulling out of content; in fact, it’s diving into deeper.

For nearly a decade, Movistar Plus+ has both increased the amount of content it produces and diversified the kinds of productions it backs. During the early days of streaming, Movistar Plus+ was a pioneer of local production by investing larger-than- ever budgets in its TV productions. Early shows such as “The Plague” and “Giants” looked like series made in Hollywood but maintained a truly Spanish spirit and setting that resonated with local audiences.

Now, the company is doing the same with its theatrical feature pipeline.

“The success that we found with our premium series gave us the confidence we needed to be bold,” says Movistar Plus+ director of fiction and entertainment content Domingo Corral. “We’d dabbled in the world of cinema before with titles like ‘While at War’ and ‘Prison 77,’ but now we want to make film production a consistent part of our annual strategy, working on five or six films each year.”

According to Corral, “The final step of this phase is creating event cinema. Something like ‘I’m Nevenka’ demonstrates our commitment to going further than before.” “Nevenka” director Icíar Bollaín says that commitment created one of the best working environments she’s…