Víctor Iriarte’s Spain-France sci-fi drama Snow Country has won the Screen International ECAM Forum Award, which recognises a project with robust
Víctor Iriarte’s Spain-France sci-fi drama Snow Country has won the Screen International ECAM Forum Award, which recognises a project with robust international co-production and festival potential from the Madrid event’s 15-title Films To Come strand, showcasing projects at an early stage of development.
Produced by Valérie Delpierre of Barcelona-based Inicia Films and co-produced by Andrea Queralt of France’s 4A4 Productions, Iriarte’s €2.5m second feature is seeking further co-producers and distributors.
Snow Country moves between Uruguay and Japan to explore migration, inherited identity and “the increasingly porous border between physical and virtual lives,” the director said.
Creative Europe Media co-development funding has enabled Iriarte to undertake extended research, including work with Mexican science-fiction writer Andrea Chapela and a ‘benshi’ specialist, a person who narrates mute films. The project has also received development support from the Catalan Institute of Cultural Companies (ICEC). The producers now plan to apply for ICEC and Spanish film body ICAA production funding and seek partners in Uruguay and Japan.
Producer Delpierre said her experience working with Queralt and Iriarte on his fiction feature debut, Foremost By Night, encouraged them to continue the partnership. She explained one of the first things she suggested was to take part in EAVE’s ‘Ties That Bind’ programme, designed to connect European producers with the Asian market and Asian producers with Europe.
“What we realised with Víctor is that time is essential to him,” she said. “He needs to be able to develop, write and research thoroughly. We have been fortunate to secure Media co-development funding and take part in the EAVE programme, which have allowed us to give the project that time.”
The project will be set up as a Spain-France-Portugal co-production backed by all respective national institutions and Eurimages, replicating the three-country structure of Foremost By Night.
“Our aim is to build on that model, given the film’s strong festival run and positive audience response in France,” said Queralt of 4A4 Productions.
She added the immediate priority is to consolidate the Spanish financing, given the intense competition in France among international projects seeking French co-production partners.
The story centres on the Hiratas, a Japanese farming family outside Montevideo. Johnny, 23, Johnny wants to escape tradition and build a future with his girlfriend Cami, while his 14-year-old sister Kaneko embraces her heritage through their grandmother Yoshiko, a former benshi. An economic crisis and his father’s heart attack push Johnny to Japan, where he works as a cleaner and drifts through the Tokyo nightlife. He later travels to Yuzawa, Japan’s “snow country”, with Niki Niki, a robot identical to Cami.
Bilbao-born Iriarte is a filmmaker and programmer whose career has bridged innovative and curatorial work. A former film programming director at San Sebastián’s Tabakalera, he helped found the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola and has served on the San Sebastián Film Festival selection committee since 2015.
His debut, Foremost By Night, starring Lola Dueñas and Ana Torrent, premiered at Venice’s Giornate degli Autori in 2023 and screened at festivals including the BFI London Film Festival and Thessaloniki. The film, which explored Spain’s stolen-babies scandal, won the Fipresci Prize at Valladolid’s Seminci and was selected for New Directors/New Films in New York.
In Snow Country, Iriarte said he will again place characters, wounded or displaced by history, inside a carefully constructed visual and sonic universe. The director describes the project “through the Japanese concept of ‘yūgen’, a mysterious beauty that cannot be seen directly but can be sensed beneath the surface”.
“I feel I’m still exploring the same themes of fragility linked to origins and identity, solitude and fear, wounds, destiny and the possibility of rewriting it, inner and outer geography, ghosts, fiction as refuge, the journey as a search, love and companionship.”
Inicia Films’ credits include Carla Simón’s Summer 1993, and Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species Of Bees.
4A4 Productions’ recent credits include Oliver Laxe’s Sirât and Ben Rivers’ Mare’s Nest, winner of the Pardo Verde at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival.
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