Spanish fiction dominates the tops of the most viewed on Netflix this month, the most used streaming platform in our country. ‘The Asunta Case’, the series starring Candela Peña and Tristán Ulloa about one of the most high-profile cases in recent Spanish black history, leads the world ranking of non-English speaking series by a large margin over its pursuer, with 65 million hours watched in the 2 weeks that have passed since its premiere. In movies, a release in early 2024 has crept into the most viewed top of Netflix Spainanticipating two great horror films that have recently joined the catalog: ‘Barbarian’ and ‘Maligno’.
The first place this week in the national ranking of Netflix’s most viewed movies goes to ‘Valley of Shadows’, a survival drama starring Miguel Herrán and Susana Abaitua, who also coincided at the end of last year in ‘Los Farad’, the Prime Video series. “I’ve been eating it for a year,” Susana confessed with a laugh before the premiere of the series, later clarifying that “when we did the casting for ‘Los Farads’, we were already in ‘Valley of Shadows’, but the film was delayed. “
The plot of ‘Valley of Shadows’ is as follows: Quique, Clara and little Lucas enjoy their first vacation together in the Himalayas, north of India. One night, sleeping outdoors during a storm, they suffer a brutal attack by bandits. Hours later, Quique is rescued by a native and taken to a remote isolated village in the mountains, where will have to survive the winter.
Salvador Calvowinner of the Goya for Best Director for ‘Adú’ (2020), is confirmed in ‘Valley of Shadows’ as “one of the few Spanish filmmakers who look for exotic locations for a very complex film to shoot.heading to Tibet with classics like ‘Lost Horizons’, ‘The Razor’s Edge’ and ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ as motto.”, according to our review of ‘Valley of Shadows’. The filmmaker began to weave this story upon knowing of a real case, the murder of a Spanish tourist and her son in India. Her boyfriend survived, and it took him a year to go to her parents’ house to tell what had happened.
But The one who carries the weight of this kind of Spanish-style ‘The Revenant’ is Miguel Herrán, who since winning the Goya for Best New Actor in 2016 for ‘A Cambio de Nada’ has been consolidating himself as one of the fittest performers on the national scene. And a good part of his success is precisely due to a Netflix series, ‘La casa de papel’, the global hit in which he co-starred as Río. To close the circle, Miguel Herrán will return to robberies on Netflix along with two former colleagues from ‘La casa de papel’ (Hovik Keuchkerian and María Pedraza) in ‘Assault on the Central Bank’, a miniseries directed by Daniel Calparsoro based on events real and set in Barcelona in the 80s.
Fran Chico is an expert in cinema and series, specialized in cultural dissemination and film criticism. He is a recognized critic on Rotten Tomatoes and Filmaffinity. Although his favorite genre is horror, the same thing tells you about the new blockbuster from Marvel’s MCU and about an auteur film to claim from the festival circuit. There is no series from Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+ that escapes its radar, delving into the catalog of each platform to recommend and analyze its best content.
Fran has been writing in Fotogramas for more than a year, but his beginnings date back almost two decades ago in film forums and blogs such as Planeta Claqueta or Moviementarios. He was founder and part of the board of directors of the digital publication of film criticism and analysis Revista Mutaciones and a member of the Association of Cinematographic Informants of Spain (AICE), the organization that awards the Feroz Awards, as well as a voter for the Blogos de Oro al indie movies. After completing the Master of Film Criticism at the Madrid Film School (ECAM) taught by Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, he has collaborated and/or covered film festivals such as San Sebastián, Sitges and Filmadrid as a specialized press for more than 10 years, along the way interviewing relevant directors, actors and actresses from the national industry such as Penélope Cruz, Carlos Saura, Ana de Armas, José Luis Cuerda or José Sacristán and internationally such as James Wan, Edgar Wright or Dario Argento.
His knowledge and experience have led him to be a film video blogger for Fnac Spain and director and host of the podcast Holocausto Zinéfago, with more than 150 programs broadcast and available in which cinema and humor are mixed from a unique and original.
