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Simmering inner turmoil, regret and a relationship on the mend feature as themes in “Little Loves” (“Los Pequeños Amores”), Spanish filmmaker Celia Rico’s anticipated second feature, which premiered in competition this week at the Málaga Film Festival.

Rico’s 2018 feature debut, “Journey to a Mother’s Room,” won the Youth Jury Award at San Sebastian Film Festival, and received a Special Mention in the New Directors competition.

Sold by Latido (“The Beasts”), “Little Loves” opens with Ani (Adriana Ozores), an independent woman with a sharp tongue and a knack for living as she pleases. When she injures herself attempting to paint her sprawling countryside home, her globetrotting middle-aged and single daughter Teresa (María Vázquez) sacrifices a Massachusetts holiday to aid in her recovery.

“I want to think that the women we’re directing show mothers and daughters on the screen with nuance; we bring them closer to the people we are,...

“Los pequeños amores,” the latest film from Celia Rico who made a splash at the 2018 San Sebastian Festival with “Journey to a Mother’s Room,” has been acquired for international sales by Spain-based Latido Films.

Produced by Barcelona-based Arcadia Motion Pictures, which co-produced Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s 2023 Goya winner and box office breakout “The Beasts, and France’s Noodles Production, Rico’s second feature is set in a bucolic countryside. It weighs in as a mother-daughter two-hander sparked after strongly independent mother Ani falls over walking the dog and is forced to use a wheelchair to get around.

Daughter Teresa cuts short a vacation to come to her side, their co-habitation grating and revealing multiple – sometime generational – differences as the film peels back the layers of their relation, exposing both women’s ambitions and fears.

Adriana Azores plays Ani, María Vázquez is Teresa.

“There are several reasons Latido had to be involved...

Three or so years ago, a new generation of directors, many women, were beginning to break out in Catalonia. That was no flash in the pan.

Following on Nely Reguera’s “María (and Everybody Else)” and Carla Simón’s Berlinale Generation Kplus pic “Summer 1993,” first features by Diana Toucedo (“Thirty Souls”), Meritxell Colell (“Facing the Wind”), Neus Ballús (“The Plague”) and Celia Rico (“Journey to a Mother’s Room”) have set the film festival circuit alight, garnering bullish reviews and a slew of prizes. Many of these women are now on to their second or third features: Simón with “Alcarrás,” Ballús (“The Odd-Job Men”), Colell, Rico (“The Little Loves”), Pilar Palomero (“La maternal”) and Reguera (“The Grandson”), among others.

Now, women producers are taking center stage: Belén Sánchez at Un Capricho Producciones (Lucía Alemeny’s “The Innocence”), Patricia Franquesa at Gadea Films (Laura Herrero’s “La Mami”) are succeeding. Many...

Latin-American focused works-in-progress event will showcase six upcoming films.

The 37th edition of the Latin American-focused works in-progress meeting Cinema en Construction will take place online this week following its cancellation due to the covid-19 pandemic.

The event was due to unfold as part of the Cinélatino, Rencontres de Toulouse festival in south-west France on March 26-27.

As in previous years, Cinema en Construction will showcase six Latin American projects in post-production.

They include Costa Rican director Paz Fábrega’s drama Restless (Desasosiego), about a woman in her 40s and a teenager who are thrown together by the latter’s unwanted pregnancy.