Antón Álvarez – aka C. Tangana – Directorial Debut ‘La Guitarra Flamenca de Yerai Cortés’ Pounced On by Latido Films (EXCLUSIVE)

John Hopewell

17 September 2024 at 7:53 am·6-min read

Latido Films has acquired rights from A Contracorriente Films to represent international sales on “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés,” the first feature as a director of Antón Álvarez, better known as C. Tangana, his stage name as a singer-songwriter.

A Contracorriente Films, which has bought world rights to the doc feature, will release “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés” in Spain on Dec. 20.

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The deal marks one of the key sales rights pick-ups on one of the films which is building strong word of mouth and anticipation before its world premiere at San Sebastian Film Festival, thanks to press and private screenings.

Highlighted to Variety by Jose Luis Rebordinos as a “great doc feature” and part of an exciting build in non-fiction in Spain, “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés” has been selected to open San Sebastian’s New Directors, its biggest sidebar.

It also marks one of the most ambitious works to date of Little Spain, a Los Angeles-based creative boutique behind “This Excessive Ambition,” directed by Santos Bacana, Cristina Trenas and Rogelio González, and catching C. Tangana creating and tiring with “El Madrileno.”

As a rapper, and then ever more a singer-songwriter and composer, who has won nine Latin Grammy Awards, Alvarez, who co-wrote Rosalía’s “Antes de Morirme” and achieved worldwide fame with “El Madrileño,” demonstrated visual flair and “modern pop nous,” said The Guardian, co-writing and directing the music video of “Oliveira Dos Cen Anos,” a centennial hymn for soccer club Celta de Vigo, possibly “the most artistically ambitious football anthem ever,” said The Guardian. The vid clip went on to win three Cannes Golden Lions.

When he came to directing “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés,” “I thought I knew some things about directing, but I wasn’t sure about the narrative,” Álvarez told Variety.

The story came, however, with Cortés, the rising star of Spain’s flamenco scene. Álvarez met him at a party, where he played guitar for singer Montse Cortés, just as Elon Musk’s Starlight satellites raced across Madrid’s night time sky, like shooting stars. As a guitarist, Cortés is “refined, discreet, different. He’s making an album, which though a guitar album, “talks about his life, his family, and about a sorrow, which he wants to tell to the world. I ask him: Does the album have a title? He says: Yes, ‘The Flamenco Guitar of Yerai Cortés,’” Álvarez recounts to camera in an early scene of the film.

The doc feature was originally conceived as a record of Cortés composing and playing the album’s songs. Some, performed in the film, are spectacular set pieces: “Plaza Argel,” bulerías performed in Alicante’s Plaza Argel, where Cortés played as a kid; the celebratory “Los gitanos somos así;” another bulería, “Es tanto lo que me callo,” sung by Cortés’ aunt, Remedios Amaya.

But as Álvarez meets his family, his father Miguel, his mother María, the film drives deeper to the heart of sadness. The film is structured as a mystery drama. For much of its running time, it seems that Cortes’ sorrow is at his parents’ separation, that they don’t even talk to each other. But there’s something else, far more touchingly tragic. Its gradual revelation drives the film, which becomes a delicate act of remembrance.

“This extraordinary picture represents the transformation of a world music star like C. Tangana into a brilliant filmmaker,” Latido Films head Antonio Saura told Variety. “His approach to the art and life of Yerai Cortés is proof that we are in the presence of an amazing cineaste. This movie not only displays the astounding music of Yerai, but immerses us in the deep conflicts of a family, that are both universal and very unique, while giving incredible insight into Roma culture in Spain.”

Variety talked to Álvarez just before the world premiere.

What was the challenge of making your first feature?

I’ve directed quite a lot of video clips, so I think I know something about visual language. Also, my generation is highly educated in visuals because we spend all day watching screens. I thought I knew something about narrative, but I didn’t. I learnt editing this film. I learnt a huge amount.

So the question becomes: What’s the story you want to tell? What’s the story in “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés”?

The deepest story, which I connected to right from the beginning, was how Yerai’s music is almost a 100% reflection of his life, how he converts into coplas, lyrics, what he’s thinking, his emotions, what’s happened to him. This linked to a giant artist. That really moves me. How someone takes their life and creates something beautiful for the rest of the world.

There’s a contrast in the film’s modernity and its focus often on a more traditional world.

That’s part of Yerai’s personality. One thing which fascinated me about Yerai is his capacity to be in both worlds. People are normally on one side or the other….The most modern thing about the film is Yerai’s personality, how he talks to his parents and understands and accepts them, and talks with his girlfriend Tania in such as contemporary way, how he addresses his sense of identity.

The film’s figures – father Miguel, mother Maria and Yerai – may be reluctant at first but open their hearts to an extraordinary degree.

When I turned the camera on them, I began to see them in a different way. The idea was to focus on the music but it’s so linked to his life….

You appear in the film first explaining how you came to meet Yerai and know about his album, and then you appear talking to Miguel and Maria or your figure peaks into frames….There’s a kind of post-modernist sense that you the narrator want to be honest about your narrating….

Maria and Miguel have become friends. When somebody is confessing such deep sentiments, it was important to me to leave clear that I was there and this is a creation. And I’ve felt that as natural. I come from hip-hop where we would take bits of music and make them our own. I’m accustomed to creating by choosing, or not choosing things.

One thing you and Yerai choose is a song, “Los gitanos somos así,” a kind of Roma pride song and dance, whose lyrics are written and sung by Cortés’ Aunt Ana to gitanos of the 21st century – many fellow performers are also Yerai’s family – while recreating how they lived before, Yerai writes in his song notes included in the film….

I’m fascinated by the culture of gitanos, [as they call themselves in Spain], by how deeply rooted the Roma community is in Spain, and its influence on customs in Spain and how it preserves something which is very ancestral. At least for my generation, globalization has taken something which gitanos haven’t been denied, no one anywhere in the world.

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