Alauda Ruiz de Azua’s “Sundays” (“Los Domingos”), the winner of the San Sebastián Film Festival’s Golden Shell for best film, has been sold to half the major movie markets in the world by Paris-based Le Pacte.
The first phase roll out for Le Pacte underscores the sales punch of a select number of breakout dramas from exciting talent scoring big prizes at big fests.
“Los Domingos” scored best film and actress (Patricia López Arnaiz) at Spain’s Forqué Awards this Saturday, making it favourite for the Spanish Academy Goya Awards in February. “Sundays” now ranks in Film Affinity España’s list as one of the best Top 10 Spanish films ever made.
Written and directed by Ruiz de Azúa, the Movistar Plus+ co-produced “Sundays” marks the second feature from Basque Ruíz de Azúa who has emerged in a spectacular fashion in just five years as a major voice in Spanish film and TV.
Ruiz de Azúa’s first feature “Lullaby” (2022) was hailed by Pedro Almodóvar as “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years.” World premiering last year at San Sebastián, her first series, “Querer,” went on to win this year the top Grand Prix at France’s Series Mania, Europe’s most important TV festival.
Now “Sundays” has achieved the Holy Grail of any feature these days sold on the open market: a powerful performance in its home territory, reaching around €4.0 million ($4.7 million) to date in Spain from an Oct. 24 release by Bteam Pictures, and rapid, fulsome sales with the potential for more to come and a theatrical release in multiple key overseas territories .
In first announced deals by Le Pacte, “Sundays,” a psychological suspense drama which delivers a penetrating take on failing family dynamics, has closed Germany and Austria (MFA+ FilmDistribution), Italy (Movies Inspired), Nordic states (Angel Films) and Australia and New Zealand (Palace Films).
Widely sold across Europe, other deals take in Benelux (Cherry Pickers), Greece (Weird Wave), Poland (Rafael Films), Switzerland (Agora Films), Romania (Independenta), Portugal (Leopardo Filmes) and Croatia (Kino Mediteran).
Le Pacte has also secured two deals with HBO for the 1st pay TV/SVOD window in both Latin America and Europe. In Latin America, the film will also receive a theatrical release ahead of the HBO window through separate deals with Cine Video y TV for Mexico and Babilla Cine for Colombia.
As already announced, Le Pacte is directly handling French distribution. It has set a wide theatrical release in France for Feb. 11, 2026. Additional territories are currently in discussions, Le Pacte confirmed Monday.
‘Sundays’: the Film
Also written by Ruiz de Azúa, “Sundays” turns on Ainara, 17, a student at a religious school in a city in northern Spain who begins the films by begging aunt Maite to persuade father Iñaki to let her go on a retreat organized by the local Betinas convent nuns, an enclosed order.
Maite, a flamboyant modern woman, and Iñaki, owner of a failing restaurant business, learn from Ainara’s spiritual director at school, a dashing young priest, that Ainara will learn from God – with whom she already talks sometimes, she says – what He wants of her.
One question in the film is whether Ainara has been deeply wounded by the death of her mother, who was deeply religious, and the distance of her father, driving her to seek the warmth of another mother, Prioress Mother Isabel, and another father, the Father.
“Not all girls who goes to a religious high school or a retreat end up becoming nuns. So though the religious world can push her in that direction, you have the sensation’s there’s more driving her,” Ruiz de Azúa has observed to Variety.
Above all, however, “Sundays” emerges as a study of failing family dynamics, plagued by intolerance, where key family members never achieve a sense of empathy with Ainara, viewing her vocation through a lens of self interest (father Iñaki) or egocentrism (aunt Pilar). Only Ainara’s grandmother and Maite’s husband step back from themselves and recognize that Ainara’s worldview may not coincide with their own, and her desires conflict with theirs, without trying to impose their will on her.
Led by newcomer Blanca Soroa in an acclaimed performance as Ainara which makes her a frontrunner for recognition in Spain’s awards season, “Sundays” also stars López Arnaiz (“Glimmers,” “20,000 Species of Bees”), Miguel Garcés (“20,000 Species of Bees”), Juan Minujín (“The Two Popes,” “Focus”) and Mabel Rivera (“The Sea Inside,” “Goya’s Ghosts”).
“Sundays ” displays fast emerging Ruiz de Azúa hallmarks, seen in “Lullaby” and “Querer”: the mix of suspense drama and psychological and social observance grounded in a knowingly depicted Basque reality; the contrast of two mindsets – though far more ambivalent here in “Sundays” – and performances by some of Spain, and now the Spanish-speaking world’s, most respected actors; and studied cinematographic direction.
Regarding the last, Ruíz de Azua observed at a press conference at September’s San Sebastián Festival, where the film stood head and shoulders above rivals in an El Diario Vasco Spanish critics’ poll, that “colors repeat in Ainara’s family home and the Betinas Convent. There are very few shots of the sky. I wanted the two worlds, which could appear very different, to belong to the same world.”
Production Details
First announced at Cannes in 2023, “Sundays” merges two Spanish production models. It forms part of a potent first film slate from Movistar Plus+ aimed at making films of large artistic and broader audience ambition at a budget which can compete with similar films from major production centers in Europe.
The strategy has already born early high-profile fruit with Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât,” which scored a Jury Prize at Cannes competition this May and two Golden Globe nominations last week.
In production, Movistar Plus+ teams with a network of production houses spread over Spain, many of which backed “Lullaby” and which are now emerging or have emerged as distinguished producers in their own right: Marisa Fernández Armenteros’ Buenapinta Media (“The Mole Agent”), Manu Calvo at Encanta Films (“Wounded”), Nahikari Ipiña at Sayaka Producciones (“Daniela Forever”) and Sandra Hermida at Colosé Producciones (“Society of the Snow”), Think Studio (“Mirage”) and Los Desencuentros Película.
