Emotional presentation ceremony of the CIIF Market Award – Development Society of Santa Cruz de Tenerife to the Canarian producer Sebastián Álvarez
The award-winning, renowned professional Sebastián Álvarez, from Volcano Films, has been one of the driving forces behind the main promotion and association tools for the industry in the Canary Islands, attracting numerous national and international filmings to the Islands.
Last Thursday, the Víctor Cinema in Santa Cruz de Tenerife hosted last night the presentation of the second CIIF Market Santa Cruz de Tenerife Development Society Award to producer Sebastián Álvarez, from Volcano Films, and the screening of the film Lo Carga el Diablo, of which he is co-producer.
The event was attended by numerous personalities from the industry in the Canary Islands. The honoree, Sebastián “Chano” Álvarez, and personal and professional friends such as directors Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Javier Fernández-Caldas, Manuel González Mauricio, Teodoro and Santiago Ríos, Cándido Armas, Eduardo Cubillo, the market director Guillermo Ríos, actors such as Javier Peña Pinto, Joel Angelino, Carmen Cabeza, Soraya González or Severiano García; or the presenter, Pilar Rumeu, among many others, attended the photocall of the event.
The councillor for the Development Society of the city council, Carmen Pérez, the manager of the Canary Islands Audiovisual Cluster, Genoveva Ayala, the coordinator of Canary Islands Film, Natacha Mora, and the technician of the Tenerife Film Commission, Ana Lima, also attended the presentation. The director of Lo Carga el Diablo, the film co-produced by Álvarez that was screened afterwards, Guillermo Polo, was also the centre of attention at the event, accompanied by Clara Santaolaya from Batiak Films, from the distributor Gloria Bretones from Begin Again Films and the actor Beneharo Hernández.
Already on stage, the director of CIIF Market, Guillermo Ríos, recalled the difficulty of getting a project off the ground and turning it into a film, and as an example he gave Lo Carga el Diablo “a project that finished putting together the financial puzzle at CIIF Market in 2019 and it was not until 2024 that it could start to be seen on the screens”. He also thanked the Development Society for its support in being able to project these two films (together with Padres last Monday) so that citizens can “see the final product of what they filmed on their street, their squares, in the bar where they usually go to have coffee… Filming sometimes causes inconvenience for citizens, but it also represents a direct benefit for all those businesses that participate in them”.
The recipient of the CIIF Market – Development Society Award, Chano Álvarez, is one of the leading figures in the Canary Islands’ audiovisual scene. He participated as a producer in the work Esposados, by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, the first Spanish short film nominated for an Oscar, and in 1994 he created Volcano Films, one of the first service production companies in Spain, of which he is CEO and executive producer.
Thanks to this and the career he has developed over the years, Sebastián Álvarez has consolidated his reputation both as an executive producer of audiovisual content and of services for third parties at the international level.
His professional interest led him to promote the creation of the Tenerife Film Commission in 2000, of which he is a founding member. He also promoted the birth of CLAC (Audiovisual Cluster of the Canary Islands), a pioneering initiative in the Islands at that time, of which he was the founding president. He was also a founding member of Profilm, the first and only association of Spanish companies that provides services to international production. Beyond collaborating with large productions in the different aspects of service or production, the business proposal of Volcano Films is focused on promoting the creation of talent in the Canary Islands, supporting the development of first films, and this is a value that Chano Álvarez defends as essential in his professional horizon.
His most outstanding works as a producer include such important titles as Caótica Ana by Julio Médem, Exodus: Gods and Kings, by Ridley Scott; Evolution, by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, a French-Spanish co-production recognized with the Special Jury Prize and Best Photography at the San Sebastián Film Festival 2015, among others; La Viajante (2019), Miguel Mejías’s first film and Rendir Los Machos (2020), also David Pantaleón’s first film.
Álvarez wanted to thank one by one all those people who were relevant in his career “since I was a 17-year-old boy, first of all, my teachers Fernando de Iturrate and Aurelio León; and then the Ríos brothers, who opened the doors of their production company to me when I still had more desire than experience.” Álvarez recalled that it is the twentieth anniversary of the CIIF Market but also “life’s coincidences, 30 years since the birth of Volcano Films” and continued with the list of people “without whose support, I as a professional and as a person, would not have gotten to where I am, such as Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Miguel Toledo, Juan Francisco Expósito from Papi Producciones…”. The producer, who collected the statuette from the hands of councillor Carmen Pérez, ended by thanking those directors such as Guillermo Polo, with whom it is a pleasure to work.
Polo himself and the co-producer of Lo Carga el Diablo, Clara Santaolaya, thanked Álvarez for the risk he took in going ahead with a project like this, which could be seen below and also received a loud and warm ovation at the end of the screening.
CIIF Market is an activity organized by Festeam, Communication and Events, sponsored by the Tenerife Island Council, Department of Culture, Museums and Sports; the City Council of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, through the Development Society; and the Government of the Canary Islands, through the Canary Islands Institute for Cultural Development, Canary Islands Film and PROEXCA; with the collaboration of Tourism of Tenerife, through the Tenerife Film Commission; the Audiovisual Cluster of the Canary Islands and Macaronesia Films, among other entities.
Lo Carga El Diablo
Director Guillermo Polo explained that he does not understand comedy without drama and assures that
“If there is something that really makes us laugh in fiction, it is a good loser.” “Deep down, we have all been that loser, that makes us empathize with him and understand his actions, even if sometimes we do not share them.” , he says. About his film, which some critics have described as a “mind-blowing road trip,” Polo says that he finds it interesting to see how “Tristán interacts throughout the journey with the various characters he meets, acting as their mirror. The clearest case is the confrontation between Álex (Mero González) and Tristán (Pablo Molinero), she as a clear representative of generation Z, and Tristán of that generation in Spain that was left halfway through everything.”
Lo carga el diablo, “an Iberian journey with touches of black humor,” in the words of its producers, focuses on Tristán, a frustrated writer who makes a living writing inspirational quotes on sugar packets.
His routine life will change the day she agrees, under mysterious circumstances, to transport the frozen body of her troubled brother Simón from Asturias to Benidorm to fulfill his last wish: to be buried in the house where they both grew up. He will soon discover that the obstacles and different characters he will have to face on this strange journey are perhaps his last chance to live a true experience and, above all, to leave his pathetic conformism behind.
The landscapes and subcultures offered by the different communities of Spain also stand out. “With this film I wanted to bring the narrative of American indie cinema to a Spanish visual identity and sound design, also paying homage to the emptied Spain.” The film is produced by Hermanos Polo, Volcano Films, Japónica Films and Batiak Films; and stars Pablo Molinero (“La Peste”), Mero González “(Lo deje cuando quiero”, “Valeria”), Isak Férriz (“Gigantes”), Antonia San Juan (“Todo sobre mi madre”, “El hoyo”), Itziar Castro (“Vis a vis”) and Manuel de Blas (“El ángel de Budapest”, “Los fantasmas de Goya”, “Un rey en la Habana”).
Guillermo Polo has written and directed five short films, has made music videos for several national and international music groups and has been working in the film and video sector since 2005.
Lo carga el diablo participated prominently in the 2019 CIIF Market under the name Pobre diablo, being recognized with the Music Library & SFX Award for music synchronization and also as a finalist for the CIIF Market Award for the project with the greatest international projection.
It has subsequently had a wide career and has been mentioned in festivals, markets and forums such as Austin Film Festival, FilmarketHub, MAFIZ Málaga, Cinema Jove Co-production Forum, Abycine Lanza and Valencia Picht Forum, among others.
The film, shot in Valencia, Alicante, Soria, Teruel and Tenerife, among other locations, had its world premiere in April at the Miami Film Festival. In addition, it opened the 39th edition of the Valencia International Film Festival Cinema Jove in June and in the coming days it will be shown at the Seminci in Valladolid.
