David Pérez Sañudo has landed a two-picture deal…

Latido Films has sealed a two-picture deal with the 36-year-old Spanish filmmaker whose debut feature Ane, repped by Latido, swept three Spanish Academy Goya Awards in 2021.

Latido will take world sales rights on both titles.

The move comes as Spanish sales companies battle to retain top-flight talent, increasingly in the crosshairs of international counterparts.

With Pérez Sañudo, Latido gets one of Spain’s most exciting young directors, particularly for a skill now held at high value in and outside the U.S.: His ability to channel genre and sub-genre, often in individual scenes, injecting them with a larger sense of narrative.

Latido handled world sales rights on films on another director with that sensitivity to sub-genre, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, from May God Save Us (2016) to The Realm (2018) and The Beasts (2022), which trounced multiple Cannes winners to win best foreign film at France’s Cesars last year.

First up for Latido is Pérez Sañudo’s Los últimos románticos, (“Azken Erromantikoak”) which has gone into production, shooting principally in Gernika, Bizkaia, near the Basque city of Bilbao.

A second chance drama adapting Txani Rodríguez’s Euskadi Prize for Literature, it turns on Irune, 40, a paper mill employee in a blue-collar town who is insecure, a bit manic, and a hypochondriac, leading a lonely life, in which the only person she could describe as a friend is one neighbor. She is also a kind person.

When an ominous lump appears on her chest, a labor dispute breaks out at her mill. Drawn in with the strikers, and contacting far more with her context, her life takes a surprising turn for the better.

“Los últimos románticos proposes a personal, individual journey, the unique story of Irune at a very specific moment in her life,” Pérez Sañudo explained to Variety.

“It’s a story of mourning and overcoming which is perceived in a luminous way,” he added, noting that the film “strikes a fragile balance between the dramatic and the comic, but also between the individual and the collective” and “an interesting debate between the old and the new, between experience and the imminent, memory and future.”

Written by Pérez Sañudo and Marina Parés, reuniting after Ane is Missing, “Los últimos románticos stars Miren Gaztañaga.

In their fourth collaboration, the film is produced by two of Spain’s most ambitious regional players, Seville’s La Claqueta and San Sebastián’s Irusoin, which partnered notably on San Sebastián winner The Endless Trench.

The second title in the two-picture deal, currently in development, will be announced at Cannes.

“We are thrilled to be working again with David Perez Sañudo, after his debut film Ane’ scored three Goya Awards. With ‘Los Últimos Románticos,’ he is ready to tell a story that will not only connect but will also stay long with the audience after leaving the cinema,” said Oscar Alonso, Latido Films head of acquisitions.

“We look forward to see him grow in a way that we did when we worked on three films with Rodrigo Sorogoyen, now an international recognized director,” Alonso added. “Last but not least, having La Claqueta and Irusoin as production partners on board of his sophomore film, let us know we are in the safest of hands to have a film with an outstanding production value.”