San Sebastian: Mexico’s Pimienta Films Boards Teodora Ana Mihai’s Drug drama ‘La Civil’
SAN SEBASTIAN Pimienta Films, one of Mexico’s fast-rising production companies, has joined forces with Belgium’s One For The Road and Romania’s Luna Film to co-produce Teodora Ana Mihai‘s fiction feature debut, Mexico-set drug drama “La Civil.”
Playing at the San Sebastian Festival’s 5th Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum, “La Civil” turns on a mother’s extraordinary transformation from housewife to vengeful militant, after her teenage daughter is kidnapped by the violent drug cartel operating in her town.
The project “was inspired by many testimonies of drug war victims in Mexico and particularly by one mother’s account,” according to Mihai, who co-writes the script alongside Mexico’s Habacuc A. de Rosario.
Set up at Mihai’s outfit One For the Road, in partnership with Irina Malcea’s Luna Film, project is currently in development and writers are working on the third draft of the script.
Romanian-Belgian Teodora Ana Mihai wrote and directed 2014 multi-awarded documentary “Waiting For August,” which nabbed, among other prizes, best documentary at both Canada’s HotDocs and Karlovy Vary.
Pimienta Films is run by brothers Sebastian and Nicolas Celis, who line-produced Amat Escalante’s narco-victim-themed Cannes best director winner “Heli” and exec produced Jonas Cuaron’s “Desierto.” Pimienta is also co-producing “Pajaros de verano,” the new film by Colombia’s Ciro Guerra (“Embrace of the Serpent”).
“La Civil” has received script and development funding from the Flemish Audiovisual Fund and research funding from Pascal Decroos Investigative Journalism Fund.
Mihai and Mexico’s Habacuc have also teamed to write “Bohemio,” a second film project about two teens growing up on the Mexico-U.S. border.
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