Inside Content Nabs International Sales Rights to Montreal Festival Player ‘Diana’

By Emiliano De Pablos

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Geraldine Gonard’s Inside Content has picked up international sales rights to Spaniard Alejo Moreno’s thriller “Diana,” an entry in the First Fiction Films competition at the 42nd Montreal World Film Festival.

Written, directed and produced by Moreno, “Diana” is an intimate and minimalist film that combines a extreme love story with a financial fraud, against the backdrop of the recent economic crisis.

“Diana” unspools in a Madrid apartment, Sofía, a deluxe call girl played by Spanish actress Ana Rujas (“Toxic Love”) receives a new client, a successful businessman called Jano -who introduces himself as Hugo. He glimpses the name Diana tattooed on her leg.

Sofia, as she herself explains in an interview for a TV program, is “social waste, a victim who didn’t know how to survive economic crisis.” Jano is taken to be a symbol, at least at the film’s get go, of an entrepreneur of the future, an example to follow. The apartment becomes a stage where the true personality -or personalities- of both characters will be gradually exposed.

Inside Content is introducing “Diana” to the international market at Montreal, and will continue to market the movie at September’s San Sebastián Film Festival.

“Although set in Madrid, ‘Diana’ tells a story that could happen anywhere around the world,” said Gonard.

“This is a risky proposal, created by a talented filmmaker. But the film can work very well on the international festival circuit, and has elements to capture the attention of international niche film TV channels programmers,” she added.

The film, who received its world premiere in March at the Malaga Film Festival, the leading dedicated showcase for Spanish cinema, opens Sept. 21 in select Spanish theaters, taking in arthouse circuit Cines Renoir.

Alejo Moreno, a long-time critic at film TV program Días de cine, a fixture on Spanish pubcaster RTVE’s cultural channel La 2, has directed two full-length documentaries, “Lords of the Nets” and “Life at Five Nots,” which played at Malaga and the Dominican Republic’s Global film festivals.

Launched 2016 as a Madrid-based company specialized in international co-production and the worldwide distribution of film and TV programming, Inside Content also produces the highly successful Conecta Fiction international TV drama co-production meeting at Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela.

The 42nd Montreal World Film Festival runs over Aug. 23-Sept. 3.