Netflix has acquired global rights to David Pablos’ “Las Elegidas” from Mundial, the joint sales venture of Stuart Ford’s IM Global and Canana, the production-sales company of Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna and Pablo Cruz, Variety reports.
Produced by Cruz, Pablos’ breakthrough movie recently scored 13 nominations for Mexico’s Ariel Academy Awards. “The Chosen Ones” was also the first Spanish-speaking title to be announced last year for the Cannes Festival, where it screened in Un Certain Regard. It will bow on Netflix from May 8. Global deal obviously does not not include territories licensed by Mundial. ARP Selection, one of France’s premier art-house distributors, acquired French rights to “The Chosen Ones” in the run-up to Cannes last-year, for instance.
Written by Pablos – with Pedro Peirano, the screenwriter of Pablo Larrain’s Oscar-nominated “No” and co-scribe on Sebastian Silva’s “The Maid” serving as a script consultant – “The Chosen Ones” followed on Pablos’ debut, “The Life After,” a teen brother road movie that, remarkably for a graduation film, played Venice Horizons in 2013. Shot in Tijuana, Pablos’ native town – the film’s leads, Oscar Torres, and Nancy Lourdes Talamantes are locals – “The Chosen Ones” turns on 15-year-old, Ulises, groomed by his father to enamor young girls, tricking them into prostitution. But he falls for Sofia, his first victim, who’s just 14. To save her, his father demands he seduces a second girl, entangling Ulises in the world of juvenile prostitution that he was trying to avoid. Escape from it comes at a very high price.
“Though set in the world of juvenile prostitution, this is a film about characters, the relationship between Ulises and Sofia, how it’s transformed,” Pablos told Variety.
He added: “The story’s seen from the masculine point of view. What moved me was to have someone born into a specific context, where he’s obliged to do certain things because of family tradition, suddenly question the world he’s in and doubt what he’s doing.”
Pablos and Cruz are now teaming on an adapatation of Roberto Bolaño’s “The Savage Detectives,” for many the towering achievement of recent Latin American literature, with Pablos writing and set to direct and Cruz producing for Canana.
