Having won an Academy Award with Belle Epoque and critical praise and B.O. with The Girl of Your Dreams, Fernando Trueba and Penélope Cruz will reteam on the comedy La reina de España.

The Spanish-language Reina is just one of four projects unveiled by scribe-helmer Trueba, Oscar-nommed this year for Chico and Rita, as he geared up for Monday’s world preem
of The Artist and the Model at Spain’s San Sebastian Fest.

A heartfelt homage to Spanish cinema, Reina marks a sequel to Girl, which starred Cruz as a songstress shooting an Andalusian musical in Nazi Germany’s Ufa Studios in 1938,
accompanied by a motley Spanish cast and crew.

Reprising Girl’s characters, Spainset Reina updates the action 17 years to the mid-‘50s, as big Hollywood shoots begin to lens in the country.

From a Trueba script, Reina will topline the same thesps, such as Antonio Resines, Santiago Segura. Cristina Huete will produce for Fernando Trueba P.C.; Cruz will co-produce.

Following the Oscar-nommed Chico and Rita, Trueba is extending his creative partnership with Javier Mariscal, one of Spain’s foremost graphic artists, via two more toon pics.

One is Tenorio, an animated docu feature about Brazilian bossa nova pianist Francisco Tenorio Jr. (see Variety, May 9). Trueba is writing, Mariscal will co-direct.

Also, Mariscal and scribe Ivan Morales are penning a fiction feature adaptation of Mariscal’s signature ‘70s cartoon series Los Garriris, “a ‘60s-set story of sex, drugs and rock in the Balearic Islands”, Trueba said.

Trueba and Mariscal co-helm. Cohen Media Group, which acquired Model for U.S. distribution, will coproduce with Fernando Trueba P.C.

Meanwhile, Trueba is writing a docu feature on Ibero-America cinema classics.

“A Chilean doesn’t know Colombian cinema, nor a Colombian Mexican films”, he lamented, citing León Hirszman’s They Don’t Wear Black Tie and Argentinean Leonardo Favio’s Chronicle of a Boy Alone as two unknown Ibero-American canon classics.

Enthused by Trueba’s idea, Walter Salles will co-produce via his Rio-de- Janeiro VideoFilmes label.

“I hope the documentary will be seen in festivals and cinematheques and on public TV but, above all, in schools and colleges”, Trueba said.

Shot largely in French and in blackand- white, set in 1943’s war-ravaged France and co-written by Jean-Claude Carriere, Trueba’s latest, Model, stars Jean Rochefort as an ageing sculptor. Claudia Cardinale plays his wife, Aida Folch (25 Carat) his model.

“It’s a film about a deeply-depressed man. Suddenly, a young girl bursts into his life: He regains a sense of plenitude and beauty he thought he’d lost for ever”, Trueba said, adding
Model is also about “art in middle of the chaos of reality”.

Bac Films distributes Model in France.

J.H.