'Tierra Baja', first feature film financed by FITE

Next May, filming will begin on 'Tierra Baja', a feature film that will be directed by Miguel Santesmases ('Madrid, above de Moon', 'Blue Days', 'Love, Curiosity, Prozac and Doubts...) and which will represent the first financing under the Teruel Investment Plan (FITE) opened by the Government of Aragon with the collaboration of Aragón TV.

The film, produced by Zavijava Films, will star Aitana Sánchez Gijón and Pere Arquillué and will be filmed in Alcañiz, Belmonte de San José and other locations in Bajo Aragón

The new line of financing from which this project will benefit will benefit from the financing mechanism launched in 2022, which has already approved financing in its first two phases for 13 audiovisual projects that have “links to the historical, social, cultural or tourist reality” of Teruel.

In this sense, the general director of Local Administration of the Government of Aragon, José Ramón Ibáñez, has highlighted that the “commitment” of the Government of Aragon to promoting the Aragonese audiovisual industry, which generates “multiple benefits in economic, tourist or cultural matters” for the community.

One of the most notable tools is the Teruel Investment Fund, which since this legislature has become a “fundamental vector” in this area for the Teruel province, which has meant “an investment of more than 2.2 million euros destined for audiovisual productions since 2020.”

For its director, Miguel Santesmases, filming this project, on which he has been working for four years, “means fulfilling a dream and a commitment” that he made with this land. "We hope to make a film that people want to see. Not only from Aragon, but from many other places. We tell a romantic comedy drama and a close love story, with which they can laugh and cry," he confessed.

As he explained, the filming has been organized in such a way as to allow Aitana Sánchez Gijón to be included. For this reason, pre-production begins on May 29 and filming begins on June 19, which will last until July 17 and will end with a sequence in Peñíscola. The film, which should be edited in November, “is ambitious and intends to travel to an international festival before its theatrical release,” he said.

Santesmases has chosen Bajo Aragón "because my roots are here, my grandmother had a farmhouse in Belmonte de San José, where I came a lot. I always wanted to make a film here." Among the locations chosen by the director will be, among others, the Plaza de España in Alcañiz, with the Lonja and the popular Lola bar, the bus station, the Guadalope river, the bridge in Castelserás, the two roads between Alcañiz and Belmonte or the hermitage of San José.

The director of the film has also expressed his gratitude to Aragon TV and to all the institutions that have supported the project: Government of Aragon, Alcañiz City Council, Teruel Provincial Council, Bajo Aragón Region, Institute of Turolenses Studies, Aragón Film Commission and Teruel Film Commission.

'Tierra Baja' has a script written by Miguel Santesmases himself together with Ángeles González Sinde, based on an original plot by the director himself, who wanted to delve into his own roots and his close connection with the town of Belmonte de San José.

The film will be a romantic drama, which will tell the story of Carmen (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a well-known Aragonese writer who has lived alone for a year in a farmhouse in a small town in Bajo Aragón. Her life crisis is complicated when Eduardo (Pere Arquillué), a film producer with whom she had a love affair twenty years ago, reappears in her life. Eduardo arrives from Barcelona asking for her help to write a script, although the real objective is to win back her love.

The mayor of Alcañiz, Ignacio Urquizu, has considered that this filming stands out for being “a fundamental element of the Alcañiz brand”, of which Holy Week, the journalism course and the driving tradition of the town are already a part. “We have achieved a cultural, educational and heritage positioning with which we are managing to stretch the city's tourist activity to the maximum,” he maintained.

The sector audiovisual is having an excellent moment in Aragón and, in the words of Francisco Querol, general director of the Aragonese Radio and Television Corporation (CARTV), "our community is working on two lines to take advantage of this wealth of wealth and culture creation. On the one hand, Aragón TV helps with its financial participation to raise and guarantee the viability of Aragonese productions, and from the Aragón Film Commission we are attracting filming from outside the Community." “The 800,000 euros of financing for the first two phases from the FITE have mobilized projects whose budgets total 13.5 million euros,” he stated.

Last year, the Aragón Film Commission collaborated with 21 filmings in the province of Teruel, which generated 241 days of film activity, 8,400 overnight stays and a direct economic impact of nearly 2 million euros.