Britain’s Taskovski Films has taken international rights to Miguel Ángel Blanca’s “Magaluf Ghost Town,” an auteurist documentary delving into the disorders that touristic excesses have generated in the erstwhile idyllic location of Magaluf in the Balearic islands.
Produced by Barcelona’s Boogaloo Films (“Tolyatti Adrift,” “Nobody’s Home”), “Magaluf Ghost Town” is a portrait of a people who “no longer own their destiny,” in the director’s words, during the high tourist season as well as the low season.
“‘Magaluf Ghost Town’ captivated us from minute one. Its setting, darkness, energy, and characters take us to the phenomenon of mass tourism that we were familiar with, but which Miguel Ángel Blanca depicts in a unique and risky way, with a singular language,” said Marina Díaz-Cabrera, acquisitions manager at Taskovski (“Babenco – Tell Me When I Die,” “Ultimina”).
She added: “We live in times when tourism is almost non-existent and cities like Magaluf will have felt ‘relief’ because of the pandemic, but it is and will be a reality that we consider important to tell and make visible.”
Blanca has already scrutinized museum-cities and their relationship with tourist invasions in “The Foreign Girl.” “However, in ‘Magaluf’ the director takes a step forward, exploring the model of low-cost tourism through the hybridization of documentary with fiction and popular humor with fantastic cinema,” producer Bernat Manzano at Boogaloo pointed out. “The ‘Magaluf’ characters run into love-hate situations typical of Ulrich Seidl’s films.”
An insight into the significance of being a tourist in Europe, and a reflection on the relation between people, tourism, and public spaces, the cinematic approach of “Magaluf” generally plays somewhere between documentary and fiction.
“I find joy in twisting the languages and genres of cinema, allowing me to mix comedy and horror to create a dark day-to-day,” said Blanca (“I Want the Eternal”), selected by Variety as a talent to watch this year.
After constructing this social, anthropological insight, he concluded: “The truth is that I no longer remember if Magaluf is the most wonderful place in the world or a real nightmare.”
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