Red Rock Entertainment News: Marbella Film Festival

Rachel Wise
Nov 6 · 3 min read

This year Marbella International Film Festival celebrated its 14th birthday and, as usual, took place in Marbella, Spain at the beginning of October (2019/10/02–06). In 2019, the selection and competition of the films participating in the event were completely different from the last year’s participants. In 2018, MIFF focused on diversity and tried to get screenings from all over the world (Egypt, Lebanon, the Americas, etc.) In 2019, the festival presented 12 shorts, 7 features, and 5 documentaries from 15 countries. The main selection in all categories was mostly represented by the participants from Europe with the rare exception of the Americas (the USA, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico) and a couple of Asian films (Nepal, India, and South Korea).

The traditional spirit of MIFF was friendly and rich in events, workshops, and screenings. Every day the visitors could attend up to eight screenings, half of them happening parallel in two cinemas. Two days of the festival were dedicated to the screening of the shorts, and the rest was left for the features and documentaries participating in the rivalry for the main prize. After every day of the festival, the huge after-party was organized to loosen up the participants and guests and give the younger generation an opportunity to begin their relationship with the big world of cinema in an informal setting.

What this year was significant for the Red Rock Entertainment team is that two of our films participated in the festival and one of them won an award. We worked hard on making Brighton happen with our old friends Stephen Cookson and Larry Lamb — the extraordinary British actor with a long history of success. Besides that, our team has also participated in the development and finalization of the project Against the Tides (a documentary about Beth French who attempted to conquer the Oceans Seven and her story on the way to the dream). The latter was nominated for the Best Documentary and the former was noted in four nominations for the Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Feature. Among the five nominations, this year Marbella’s selection got us one — Larry Lamb won the Best Actor and this win was well-deserved!

It is notable that in 2019 Marbella enlarged its number of workshops and besides winning the Best Actor nomination, Larry Lamb has also given a marvelous workshop for both beginners and the long-lasting professionals of the acting art. Larry talked not only about his way to the Olympus of the British cinema and the pitfalls he had to overcome, he primarily focused on how to become a great actor and explained the yet green audience that on the way to success it is only hard work and luck that get paid off in abundance later in everyone’s career.

Besides Larry, the Red Rock Entertainment CEO Gary Collins also agreed to throw a workshop during the MIFF for the young and bright filmmakers who are struggling in starting their project. As the guru of the industry, he has reviewed, produced, and no less important rejected hundreds of projects, hence Gary focused on his experience with financing and attracting executive producers to a project. He described the day-to-day operations that he, as the exemplary executive producer, has to do and hence unveiled the mystery of what executive producers are looking for in a new project.

The festival ended with a pompous and yet modest ceremony of the winners’ announcement. It is notable that among all nominations (nine in total), seven of them were won by the British filmmakers, actors, and films in general. Such a tendency could not but made happy our team, since the feeling of pride was filling our hearts when the winners were announced. After the festival ended, its representatives (organizers and stars) started a tour around the countries, and they have already participated in an international film festival “Bucovina” that takes place in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. After “Bucovina”, the team of MIFF will continue to travel the world and attend other film festivals with its stars to give workshops and share their own experience in festivals organization. In the meantime, Red Rock Entertainment already begins to prepare its next project to win the next prize at Marbella International Film Festival in 2020.

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