Adriana Arratia’s highly anticipated debut feature Death in Torrevieja, which is an expansion of her remarkable 2023 short of the same name, has signed its first international co-production agreement with Luxembourg’s Deal Productions.
Diehl, founded by “Bad Banks” actors Desiree Nosbusch and Alexandra Horsdorf (“High Fantasy”) and signed to CAA in 2024, is behind the love story “Poison,” starring Tim Roth and Trine Dyrholm, the Western adventure “Flatland,” which opened at Berlinale Panorama in 2019, and the Toronto selection “Souvenir,” which headlined Isabelle. Huppert.
Attracting further upstream partners is usually a very good sign for films still in development Death in Torrevieja, a 2025 Berlinale Talent Project Market title, will be distributed in Spain by ADSO, which also released Oscar winner Flow and Cannes Uncertain Point winner Pillion.
In a separate move, Valencia-based pubcaster A Punto pre-purchased free TV rights.
Starring Caterina Hurtado and Ana María Jiménez (Simón El Mago), who starred in the short film, Death in Torrevieja is produced by Nakamura Films/Mas, an axis of new talent from Valencia and Barcelona. Produced by Keta Films, it is directed by Araceli Isaac Delso and Jordi Llorca, who also directed Alex Montoya’s The House, which was a critics’ choice at the 2024 Malaga Festival. The film won six awards and grossed 588,216 euros ($682,330) at the Spanish box office. This is great for an independent title from a director who was largely unknown at the time.
Deal Productions “offers a wide range of high-quality commercial products with a feminine touch.” Given its short length of 15 minutes, this seems like a good description of Arratia’s character.
In this short feature, which won the Best Director award at the Madrid PNR Film Festival and the Best Short Film award at both the Sant Joan Film Festival and the BCN Film Festival in Barcelona, Hurtado plays Chettiar, a “Nini” (a person who does not study or have a regular job) who organizes an illegal balcony bet for drunken tourists.
She is desperate to flee to Madrid and appear on Big Brother, but her young child Yelai keeps her anchored in Torrevieja, a low-cost tourist destination in southern Spain.
Shot with a cheesy pop-out aesthetic, “Death in Torrevieja” takes its cue from the so-called “quinqui” film, a domestic subgenre of Spain from the 1980s. Think of Carlos Saura’s 1981 Berlin Golden Bear winner “Deprisa, Deprisa” or Eloy de la Iglesia’s 1980 “Navajeros.” The film depicted marginalized working-class criminals, robberies, police brutality, harsh language, heroin abuse, and a vague desire for freedom and visceral contempt for authority and middle-class conventions.
Aratia especially worships the altar of de la Iglesia. A highly political, blunt but structured political melodrama produced from the 60s to the 80s, it emphasized how the Spanish ruling class exploited young proles and drove them to crime due to the lack of real economic alternatives. Patriarchal authorities, on the other hand, appeal to family values, embodied in de la Iglesia’s El Pico and El Pico II by a father in the private security guard who dreams of sending his drug-addicted son to join the army.
However, the delinquent hero in De La Iglesia was a man. As in the short story, the story’s plot description says that a plotter causes a tourist to die in a balcony bet, forcing Chettiar to make a “desperate decision that defies the law.”
“Adriana’s debut film Death of Torrevieja brings a fresh female perspective to Spanish quinqui cinema, with a bold contemporary voice and a strong focus on life on the margins of society. The film mixes raw realism with a vibrant aesthetic inspired by today’s youth culture,” said producer Araceli Isaac Delso.
“The film depicts a marginalized woman forced into motherhood against the backdrop of Spain’s cheap coastal tourism economy, feeling no love for her children and unwilling to take on that role, while fighting to survive in a town shaped by insecurity and phenomena such as balconies,” added Arratia. “Inspired by Eloy de la Iglesia, this film reimagines the quinqui genre through a female lens, with a female director and non-professional leads.”
