Yahoo Finance Conecta Fiction’s Geraldine Gonard, Producer Luis Collar Unveil Sales Agency Feel Content (EXCLUSIVE)
Two leading lights on the international Spanish film-TV scene, sales agent Geraldine Gonard, director of Spain’s Conecta Fiction co-production forum, and Luis Collar, a partner and CEO of The Circular Group, a diversified film company, have joined forces to create Feel Content, which makes its public market bow at Ventana Sur.
A dedicated sales company, Feel Content, backed by Gonard’s Inside Content and Collar’s Great Waves, aims to exploit new opportunities emerging in the fast evolving sales landscape, acquiring individual titles and catalogs of Spanish-language and European films.
It hits the ground running at Ventana Sur, announcing two new acquisitions, Matías Meyer’s “Modern Loves” and “Karakol,” from Argentina’s Saula Benavente, which join two titles it introduced to buyers at Malaga’s Spanish Screenings: Gracia Querejeta’s “The Invisible” and “Pullman.”
“We think there’s a clear gap to fill in Spain for one more international sales agency, given there aren’t many in the country. Those that are here can’t represent all the films coming onto the market,” said Collar.
Plugging that breach, Feel Content can bring multiple assets to the table. One is the large experience and breadth of expertise of the two partners and their team.
Launching Conecta Fiction in 2017, Gonard has extensive experience as a film-TV sales agent, at Sogepaq (1997-2001), Grupo Pi (2001-06) and serving as managing director and COO at Imagina Intl. Sales from 2007 to 2015, which largely focused on exporting TV series, before hanging her own shingle, Inside Content, in 2016.
Collar’s The Circular Group takes in film, TV and commercials production (Nephilim Producciones); festival management and investment (Great Ways); festival distribution (Agencia Freak); doc feature and short film sales (Feel Sales); Feelmakers, a triple channel VOD platform for docs, shorts and animation; and Cortogenia, a short films fest founded in 1999.
A select producer, Nephilim has co-produced Paraguayan break out “7 Boxes,” Lucia Garibaldi’s “Sharks,” a Sundance best directing winner, and “Gloria,” a Berlinale best actress laureate for Paulina García, directed by Academy Award winner Sebastián Lelio.
“We complement each other very well. It’s fundamental to associate with someone who gives you what you have less of, and where you give what they have less of,” said Collar.
Another highly experienced executive, Eva Pérez Martín – a former sales executive at Plural Ent. España, Britel channels director, and content program manager at Global Eagle Ent.- has been appointed as Feel Content’s international sales manager.
Unlike most Spain-based sales companies, Feel Content will target not only Spanish-language movies but features from the rest of Europe, and especially Eastern Europe, Gonard said.
The sales company is also launching at a time of exploding OTT demand for content as Disney Plus rolls out around the globe, launching in Latin America on Nov. 17. HBO Max is scheduled to bow in both Latin America and Spain, as well as Scandinavia, in 2021. In Europe, at 53% of viewership, streaming has overtaken linear TV in total hours watched, according to a survey by Samsung Behind the Screens, 2020.
“Global and regional platforms – SVOD and AVOD – are experiencing brutal growth and need a lot of content. Films which have no or short theatrical runs in domestic markets will in a relatively short time have a large outlet on platforms,” Gonard predicted. Sales to platforms will outweigh those to TV, Collar added.
The company will work with multiple types of movies such as mainstream, genre, festival films, Gonard explained.
An ensemble drama with comedic moments, “Modern Loves,” the portrait of the implosion of a traditional upper middle-class Mexican family, questions the survival of conventional love involving two lifelong partners in a world of individualism and crumbling patriarchy.
A move towards the mainstream for Meyer in its focus – the family – and its stars – Ilse Salas (“Gueros,” “The Good Girls”) and Luis Ortizgris (“Museum”), it world premiered at Los Cabos Film Festival in November 2019.
Benavente’s solo feature debut, “Karakol” turns on a daughter who, unable to accept her father’s death, travels to a remote lake in Tajikistan where she believes he had another life. Making its market debut at Ventana Sur, “Karakol” bowed on Argentine platform Cine.Ar in September.
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