Nascent indie production outfit Little Spain and Sony Music Entertainment have provided Variety with the exclusive first look trailer for upcoming Movistar Plus+ Original “This Excessive Ambition” (“Esta Ambición Desmedida”), a unique look at the life and times of multifaceted Spanish musician, C. Tangana.
The trailer is dropping in the build up to “This Excessive Ambition’s” world premiere at the 71st San Sebastián Film Festival’s big screen Velodrome, which accommodates nearly 3,000 spectators.
Billed as “not a tour, not a documentary, it’s a tragedy in three acts,” the film curates more than four years of footage into an eye-opening look at life at the top of the music industry by way of the lauded Grammy Award-winning experimental musician, referred to as Pucho by his inner circle.
The project is dutifully directed by Santos Bacana, Cris Trenas and Rogelio González (“Now You Know”), creatives who share an intimate connection to the album and artist and were able to turn a privileged lens on his world, having worked together to bring the album’s aesthetic to life with concept art and stand-alone videos for each track.
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The three, along with C. Tangana and María Rubio, joined to create Little Spain in 2020, a production venture that takes advantage of their diverse skill sets to drive fresh cinematic takes onto the market in a collective, unconventional manner.
Focusing on the depths of his creativity and ability to create far-reaching and diverse music communities that bolster his craft, the spectacle also hits on the commercial side of fame, the obstacles that stand in the way of access and his determination to see concepts through to fruition, avoiding the sex, drugs and unfettered excesses other behind-the-scenes music films are steeped in.
“It helps to have a character like Pucho because his creative process is super interesting. There’s a lot to say, even though that’s the side that people know less about. In that sense, we were lucky because we had a lot to explore that hadn’t been shown,” Trenas told Variety.
From the roaring success of his third album, “El Madrileño,” which amassed more than 2 billion streams worldwide, topping the charts and reaching No.1 on Spotify’s Global Album Debuts chart, the team capture highly intimate celebrations and an oft-frustrating upward climb towards the visionary supporting tour through Spain and Latin America.
“We were improvising all the time and started with an idea of what we wanted to do, it kept evolving. When we started editing, we started to see what worked and what didn’t work, and that also changed the way we continued shooting,” Trenas admitted.
“There was a lot of footage that we would have liked to include but it didn’t relate to the story. So many times you have to kill your own idea, one after the other, or kill your friend’s idea because it doesn’t relate to the magnitude of the story. Being able to kill each other’s babies was necessary as well,” González added.
The trailer seizes on the frenzy surrounding the tour, our protagonist is witnessed in the middle of the chaos, contemplating the vast expanse of modern day fame as hurdles are placed in front of his strides. Snippets of his enigmatic life on stage mingle with commentary from those he holds dear, all culminating in a grand performance. Frustration and gratification hold equal weight throughout, as the pressures of securing financial gains threaten to put a stranglehold on his creativity.
Demonstrating the ingenious fusion of traditional Latin music with raw urban appeal, the project bears witness as C. Tangana achieves a boundless style and form while illustrating that the world of music ebbs and flows together, and by combining genres, boundaries disappear, allowing the public to expand their sonic appetites, creating a vast community by way of collaboration.
Bacana admitted that C. Tangana feels “the real way of transcending is through community, feeling part of something bigger than the role of iconic, traditional rock star.”
“The whole album was already a mix of Latin music references with pop, traditional and regional Mexican, Spanish folk, etc…that melting pot was already in the genesis of the album. With those elements, he created something new that extended to the technicians, production designer, the scene director, too. They’re all part of this community, ourselves included,” he added when referring to their close -knit, “creative ecosystem.”
A Movistar Plus+ Original, commercial distribution is handled by Sony Music Premium Content, dedicated to developing and producing innovative audiovisual content linked to music and artists. The title bows in Spanish theaters on Oct. 26 after its San Sebastian debut, thanks to independent film production and distribution house Avalon (“Alcarràs”).
An obvious must-see for C. Tangana fans, Sergi Reitg, director of Premium Content at Sony Music Iberia & Strategic Projects Latin Iberia, opines on the title’s broader universal appeal, “Even if you’re not a fan, you can easily understand the story of this artist, the story behind this amazing and crazy tour, and how he built his brand and position as an artist through the last three, four years, which include the documentary. It’s an amazing story to be told, to be shared with an audience and I imagine everyone that likes music and is interested in the music business will be attracted to this story.”
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