Madrid’s ECAM Forum closed its third edition on Thursday, June 11th, with Maria Aparicio’s Unlimited Things II (Las cosas indefinidas II) winning the Last Push Award and Pauline Julier and Nicolas Chapourier’s The Indies. Indes” won the Special Jury Prize, capping a three-day event that once again positioned the Spanish capital as a strategic meeting place for independent films from Europe and Latin America.
These awards confirmed the Forum’s role as a showcase for projects that already have strong authors and international credentials. Aparicio returns to the award-winning world of The Undefined, following Eva around Madrid’s Reina Sofía in a story that opens up questions of labor, memory, and displacement. Produced by Switzerland’s Arena Film and Spain’s Luster Media, ‘The Indies’ represents one of Europe’s most ambitious co-production packages in Last Push. This is a 17th century historical drama that moves back and forth between France and Spain as the old order collapses and new struggles emerge.
“The Undefined II”
Films to Come extends the award across projects with great potential for festivals and the industry. Victor Diago’s queer fantasy horror “Las Manos Quitas” won the Firmin Award, Ángel Filguera’s “Handén” won the IFFR Rotterdam Award, and Victor Iriarte’s Spanish-French sci-fi drama “Snowland” won the Screen International Award. Enrique Breo’s Paromita Elarante, a tragicomedy about characters unable to find their place in a world full of ready-made answers, emerged as the most awarded title in the category, winning both the Madrid Cinema Award and the Equipo SOPA Award.
Breo’s project arrived at the ECAM Forum after winning the ECAM Forum Award at Abyssine Lanza. Meanwhile, Iriarte will see the premiere of Foremost by Night at Giornate degli Autori in Venice in 2023, and continues his career steps with Snow Land, produced by Spain’s Initia Films and Palmeras Salvajes and France’s 4A4 Productions.
The Les Arcs award went to Maya Odeh, producer of Mayana Films, for Suha Araf’s “Chentian.” This is a Palestinian-German drama about two sisters, their land confiscation, their desires, and their survival under occupation. In the ECAM series market, “La caldera” by Laura López Fuertes, Jaime Pérez Fernández and Juan Sánchez Gómez won the Series Mania Forum Award, and “El observatorio” by Laura Roque, Eloy Zamora and Luis Sorolla won the Cilializados Award.
“Paromita Elante”
Forum built around industry questions
ECAM Forum 2026, held in Matadero Madrid, gathered nearly 800 accredited participants, including festival programmers, sales agents, distributors, producers, fund representatives and association officials. Across the lineup, questions of identity, memory, migration, and contemporary uncertainty were reflected in the forum’s industry-core questions of how independent films can finance, travel internationally, and maintain a singular voice.
The issue came into sharp focus at FINDE, the forum’s fundraising arm. At the beginning of the session, ECAM Director Gonzalo Salazar Simpson positioned the event as a relationship-building mechanism, saying that what matters is “not what happens here, but what starts here,” and urged Spanish producers to engage with potential investors in a different way.
Carlos Anton, head of the Madrid Audiovisual Cluster, EGEDA and Claire SGR, said FINDE is a practical attempt to bring private finance closer to audiovisual projects “in a more dynamic, professional and international way”. He said Crea SGR currently finances more than 400 million euros ($465 million) annually to audiovisual and cultural projects in Spain.
The producer’s opinion came with a caveat. Pilar Benito, general manager of Morena Films, said production costs have increased by 20-25% since the pandemic, but some public support has not kept up. She argued that while financial incentives are now at the heart of Spanish film production, independent producers still lack the “funds to take risks and make substantial equity investments” – funds that would allow them to tighten the last bit of their budgets without forcing cuts to salaries, producer fees or intellectual property.
Other FINDE speakers focused on how alternative finance works. “Basic, fundamental guarantees are the story,” said Jesús Martínez, founder and advisor at venture capital fund Moby Dick, while Javier Villaseca of SEGO Creative and Antonio Manso of BE&JING pointed to a more diversified market where producers mix and match instruments depending on the size, timing and risk profile of each project.
Filmmakers rebel against speed
That concern with scale and control continues in State of Things, where Rodrigo Sologoen, Arauda Ruiz de Azua, and Sandra Romero discuss faster production rhythms, changing audience habits, and marketing and casting as areas where creative control is negotiated.
This conversation brought together three directors working in different fields of Spanish film and television. Luis de Azua, Goya Award-winning director of “Lullaby” and creator and director of “Cuellar” on Movistar Plus+. Romero’s debut feature film, Por donde pasa el silencio, premiered at New Directors in San Sebastian.
Faced with a climate of hyper-connectivity and acceleration, Luis de Azua described his instinct as one of withdrawal. In other words, give your latest project as much time as you feel it needs. She also suggested that audiences are increasingly moving between two sensibilities. One is shaped by quick consumption, the other is still open to a more complex cinematic experience.
Sorogoyen’s diagnosis was more blunt. He said he viewed the speed of the current cultural system “very negatively,” arguing that faster consumption tends to cause industries to produce faster. Still, this conversation did not show that the filmmakers were powerless. Privilege, time, and the ability to choose projects were framed as ways to resist that pressure.
This exchange also touched the audience and the stage. Luis de Azua said he thinks about his audience but rejects the idea of writing for an abstract “average audience.” For Sorogoyen, sacrificing one’s perspective in order to be understood is “breadth for today and hunger for tomorrow.”
Marketing has emerged as another area in which filmmakers negotiate how their work reaches the public. Sologoen acknowledged that film is an art and an industry, while Luis de Azua pointed out that posters, trailers, and positioning shape a film’s “market presence,” even though such conversations take shape after the film has been shot or edited.
However, casting emerged as a more decisive issue of creative control. Sorogoyen said he uses casting to find out if he and the actor “can communicate in the same way.” Luis de Azua described this as “going to meet someone”, observing how different performers embody different versions of the same character. What emerged was a practical map of creative control. Industry pressures may dictate the direction of a film, but casting, time, and the freedom to choose collaborators remain decisive.
Indie films reach the world
The international aspect of the forum was strengthened by two masterclasses by Brazilian producer Rodrigo Teixeira and Argentine-Swiss film director Milagros Mumenthaler.
RT Founder of Features and director of Walter Salles’ Oscar-winning Brazilian drama “I’m Still Here,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name,” Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” Noah Baumba Teixeira, the producer of “Francis Ha,” directed by George W., and “Paper Tiger,” directed by James Gray, used his appearance at the ECAM forum to argue that independent filmmaking is now fundamentally global.
“There is no self-sufficient independent film in any country in the world,” Teixeira said in Madrid, pointing to Michael Almereyda’s Don DeLillo’s Zero K, which was shot entirely in São Paulo with an international cast, as evidence of a new production map. “The film world is now much more international than Hollywood,” he added.
Mumenthal, director of Back to Stay, which won the Locarno Golden Leopard Award, gave the reflective part of the forum a more intimate feel. Her masterclass, presented at Film Madrid, explores home, the body, sound and memory – the materials that have shaped her films from Back to Stay to The Current – while also opening the door to her next project, a male-driven “romance drama” centered around young men.
Madrid meeting point matures
By the final day, the ECAM team began reading the third edition as a year of integration. Alba Wystraëte, general manager of Fundación ECAM, said the challenge was to “grow without spilling over” while integrating the forum into national and international calendars, increasing the visibility of speakers and participants.
For ECAM Forum Coordinator Alberto Valverde, the event was born out of a simple industry need. “Spain needed an intimate and friendly meeting point that could bring international festivals, sales agents, producers and distributors to Madrid around carefully selected projects.” This year’s response was “overwhelmingly positive,” he said, confirming that it is “already a mature version.”
In the third edition, we proposed practical uses for forums. It is a meeting place in Madrid where indie projects are tested, funding models are debated and international partnerships begin to take shape.
