Isabel Coixet Lines Up ‘Snow in Benidorm’ with the Almodovars’ El Deseo (EXCLUSIVE)

Isabel Coixet is making feature film “Snow in Benidorm” with Pedro and Agustin Almodovar’s shingle El Deseo. The story is about the British and Spanish communities in the titular seaside resort.

Coixet is a Berlinale regular, having served on the jury; her feature “The Bookshop” screened in the Special Section last year. This time out, her black-and-white period picture for Netflix, “Elisa & Marcela,” is in competition.

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She will switch to contemporary Spain for the Benidorm movie. The city on Spain’s eastern Mediterranean coast has been a longtime favorite haunt for holidaying Brits – who often reject local food and culture for homegrown comforts – and for the Spanish for far longer.

Coixet told Variety that she wants to “explore the atmosphere of people reproducing the way of living in England, but in another landscape.”

Benidorm is “a very, very peculiar place” Coixet said, explaining her interest in the locale. “It’s a very divided city, with the English community and the Spanish community. The British, they use Benidorm like its Blackpool with sun, and the old population in Spain, they go there and they lie in the sun too.

“Those two communities, they live in parallel worlds and I wanted to explore that.”

Agustin Almodovar is expected to produce with Pedro Almodovar and El Deseo’s Esther Garcia. “We’re very happy to work again with Isabel, a filmmaker whose films we follow very closely and whom we admire a lot,” Agustin said. “For us ‘Snow in Benidorm’ is a very attractive project.”

Given the setting is winter the shoot will probably be at the end of 2019. Plot details are thin on the ground but the film will focus on a relationship between a couple in Benidorm. It will be Spanish and English.

John Hopewell contributed to this report.

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