About Us

A CONTRACORRIENTE FILMS is a film distribution and production company founded in 2009 to become one of the leading film companies in the Spanish market. Based in Barcelona, its main shareholders and management team have many years of experience in the profession, having developed their careers at companies such as Grupo Planeta, Filmax, and Notro Films/Vértice 360, where they have launched such diverse titles in Spain as Solas (Benito Zambrano), The Pianist (Polanski), It's Not You, It's Me (Taratuto), and The Fog (Frank Darabont). Specifically, the majority of Notro Films' shareholders and almost all of its professional team constitute the operational core of A CONTRACORRIENTE. Specializing in European and independent films with the potential to reach a wide audience, A CONTRACORRIENTE FILMS is currently the leading Spanish-owned distributor in the theatrical market, having accumulated more than 20 million admissions and with a 2018 box office gross of over €21 million. Its particularly successful titles include The Intouchables, My God, What Have We Done to You?, Handia, The Seducers, Little White Lies, Professor Lazhar, Welcome to the South, The Man Next Door, and Jane Eyre. Its catalog of more than 1,500 titles, which it manages in theaters, platforms, television, and on home Blu-ray, also includes some of the most outstanding classics of all time, directed by masters such as Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita), Jean Renoir (Boudou Saved from Water), Ingmar Bergman (Fanny and Alexander), Jacques Tati (My Uncle), and Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story). Era-defining films such as Children of Paradise, Rififi, Don Camillo, The Ninth Gate, Taxi Express, The Piano, Cinema Paradiso, and Babette's Feast, titles that A CONTRACORRIENTE successfully re-released in theaters, have been revived by the company for DVD and television distribution. The company has also specialized in segments as diverse as family films, with hits like Ballerina, Mia and the White Lion, and the Spanish film The Best Summer of My Life, and art documentaries. In this genre, it maintains strategic agreements with the world's leading production companies, with highly successful films about figures such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Goya, Van Gogh, and Picasso, as well as galleries and museums such as El Prado, whose film commemorating its Second Centenary (Painters and Kings of the Prado) starred Jeremy Irons. A CONTRACORRIENTEIt also distributes its own films, such as Ciudadano Ilustre (Distinguished Citizen), winner of the Goya Award and the big winner at the 2017 Platino Awards; The Bookshop, by Isabel Coixet, which was seen by more than half a million viewers and won the Goya Award for Best Film, among other awards; and Litus, by Dani de la Orden. Since 2014, A CONTRACORRIENTE has also owned and programmed movie theaters, becoming the main shareholder in the Cines Conde Duque and Verdi chains, with a strong presence in Barcelona and Madrid. The Barcelona-Sant Jordi International Film Festival (BCN Film Fest) is held annually at the emblematic Cine Verdi in Barcelona, whose exponential growth has made it the leading festival in the country specializing in the Cinema-History-Literature triangle.