Looking ever more to Spain, a natural partner, Portuguese public broadcaster RTP has boarded “Millennial Mal,” a series created by actor, screenwriter and stand-up comic Lorena Iglesias who co-directs with Andrea Jaurrieta, who made a splash with her second feature, “Nina.”
The series is produced by Oscar winner Tornasol Media (“The Secret in Their Eyes”), Ukbar Filmes, behind Netflix smash hit “Turn of the Tide,” and Spanish SVOD platform Filmin which also has Spain’s first TV window. RTP now serves as the show’s anchor broadcaster in Portugal.
Written by Iglesias, “Millennial Mal” turns on Judith, 42, an out-of-work debt-drowning librarian, who receives a university grant in a bureaucratic error. To access it, however, she has to attend the university and pass herself off as under 30. Aided by two younger women, has a Gen Z makeover. Trouble is, she ends up believing her facade.
“On social networks, we see every day how 20-year-old girls live, talk, dance, have relationships, express themselves freely,” said Iglesias.. “This has awoken in many women an intimate, almost secret, question: How would my youth have been if I lived it now? Without so many of the fears, complexes, and prejudices hick shaped us in the ‘90s and the ‘00s. ‘Millennial Mal’ is born out of this shared fantasy.”
Made up of five 25-30 minute episodes, “Millennial Mal” also “pays tribute to women screenwriters who taught me that the personal could be political and intimate comic,” said Iglesias, citing Tina Fey, Nora Ephron and Amy Sherman-Palladino.
Starring Iglesias as Judith, “Millennial Mal” is produced by Tornasol producers Mariela Besuievsky and Gerardo Herrero,
Filmin co-founder Jaume Ripoll and Ukbar Filmes’ producer Pandora da Cunha Telles.
RTP’s participation not only improves the series production quality but also allows it to travel and deepens the collaboration between Portugal and Spain,” Besuievsky told Variety.
“Millennial Mal” has hone into production in Spain, shooting primarily in Navarre, but it will also film in Portugal and have Portuguese cast and crew, she added.
The series is the first TV show to go into production which was developed at Spain’s Film Academy Residence program.
Ever more active on the TV front, Tornasol Media won Series Mania’s Seriesmakers with. During Canneseries, Wild Bunch TV announced it had boarded international distribution on Spanish crime thriller “The Clan Olimpia,” starring “Carmen and Lola” breakout Zaira Romero as housewife-turned-drug-queenpin. Disney+ will release will release the redemption story in Spain on July 9.
Behind “Turn of the Tide,” which played Netflix’s Top 10 most watched non-English language series over May 29-June 11, 2023, Ukbar Filmes also co-produced Prime Video hit “Silent Cargo.” At Conecta Fiction, it made a large news splash announcing “Told by Women” Season 2, an expanded edition of the ambitious anthology series whose TV movies are all shot by women and set in small cities in Portugal.
An upscale streaming service, releasing arthouse and crossover movies and a wide broad variety of series, often in non-English language, Spain’s Filmin entered series production in 2021, backing notably “Selftape.”
RTP produced Agua Seca with Galicia’s TVG in 2020 and in 2021 teamed with Spanish pubcaster RTVE to produce noir thriller “Sequia,” the partners first ever scripted co-production. Since then, Portugal has looked ever more to Spain and Galicia in particular for production partners, hitting Conecta Fiction in 2024, where it featured as one of the forum’s guest countries, with some 20 titles.