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Buzz titles include animation ’Dragonkeeper’ and ‘Co-Husbands’.

Mafiz, the industry sector of the Málaga Film Festival, which closed on Sunday March 19, attracted its highest numbers of attendees to date, up 54% on last year.

In total. 1,897 industry players came from 64 countries, with a gender parity of 963 men and 934 women.

International promotion platform Spanish Screenings registered the highest number of participants at 206 buyers and producers. Overall by sector Mafiz attracted 1,095 producers, 206 buyers, 70 festivals delegates, 26 sales agents and 36 exhibitors and local distributors.

The Málaga Festival Fund & Co-Production Event project (Maff) scored 152 attendants and 568 one-to-one meetings around 39 Ibero-American projects.

The response from buyers has...

Estíbaliz Urresola Solaguren’s celebrated Spanish feature “20,000 Species of Bees” and Kattia G. Zúñiga’s Panamanian drama “Sister & Sister” took the top prizes at the Malaga Film Festival, garnering the Golden Biznagas for Spanish and Latin American pictures respectively.

“20,000 Species of Bees” also won best supporting actress for Patricia López Arnaiz and picked up the Spanish Cinematographic Informers Association’s Feroz Puerta Oscura award. The film’s success follows two awards in Berlin, including a Silver Bear for Sofía Otero for her portrayal of a young girl going through a gender crisis.

For Zúñiga, the Golden Biznaga is sure to help further propel “Sister & Sister,” an autobiographical story about two teenage sisters who travel from Costa Rica to Panama in search of their absent father. Pic drew upbeat reviews in Malaga following on its SXSW world premiere.

Also making waves at the Malaga Festival, which runs...

Madrid, Spain — Industry prizes will be announced on Friday, Festival awards one day later. Yet even by Thursday evening, as this year’s Malaga Festival’s Mafiz-Spanish Screenings headed into its home straits, Spain film and TV industry was sending strong signs of their consolidation as an international market power.

That cut multiple ways. Following, 10 provisional takes on this year’s event:

The Biggest Malaga Ever, By a Head

Final attendance has blasted past last year’s 1,600, in itself a massive hike on years prior, tracking by Thursday at 1,700 attendees from 61 countries at Mafiz, Malaga’s industry arm. The Spanish Screenings alone account for getting on half of those accreditations. “The market’s been very good,” said Vicente Canales at Film Factory. “There’s been enough buyers, spending more time watching Spanish films. At Berlin and Cannes, they just don’t have the time. And Screenings attendance has been high.

Panamanian-Costa Rican director Kattia G. Zúñiga, whose debut feature “Las hijas” (“Sister & Sister”) premieres at the Malaga Film festival, is developing a new feature project about women finding their and a tougher attitude late in life through the power of dance. The project re-teams her with “Las Hijas” producer Alejo Crisóstomo.

“Rabiosas” (“Raging”, their project, follows a group of 55-year-old friends in Panama who decide to take ballet classes together, as they did when they were schoolgirls, in order to cheer up a friend going through a difficult time and also to get out of the routine of daily life. Inspired by their 26-year-old teacher, however, they soon switch to bolder dancing moves.

Their coach encourages them to release their emotions, especially pent-up anger, and not only in the studio but in their regular lives. As their development intensifies, they begin to experience changes in the way they perceive...