PART 2: More Is More. 8000+ Attendees, Make New Friends & Learn

The New Global Screen Economy Summit — Opening day, Nov 10

Whether you are seeking financing, representation, creative or business partners, production locations and incentives, AI and technology partners, or are ready to pitch your next film, the in-person meetings and connections that happen organically each year at AFM have been career-changing.

Remember those previous AFM Finance Seminars? This is the 6.0 version. There is MORE. 

The expanded AFM Innovation Hub, in partnership with Marché du Film’s Cannes Next, and the North American debut of The Cinemas Club, will explore the future of theatrical exhibition and moviegoing. Over four days, Wednesday, November 11 through Saturday, November 14, 2026, AFM House.  All of this added newness demands a smart schedule. Download the AFM26 app on your iOS or Android device.

The Summit will explore-and aim to decode the proposed Federal Production Incentive. It will unpack layers of jargony stuff: Creator and Audience-driven studios, emerging IP, fresh ways to find your audience and how to monetize what you’re developing and protect what you already have. It will assess current scenarios transforming our industry. 

Separately ticketed. Standalone Attendee Price or AFM Attendee Rate.  

Presenters include; Jackie Brenneman President & CEO, Independent Film & Television Alliance, Josh Rogin, SVP, Federal Government Affairs, Motion Picture Association (MPA) Tyler Chou, Founder & CEO, Tyler Chou Law for Creators, CreatorArq M&A Advisory, Jordan Lonner, Agent & Co-Head, Motion Picture Literary Department, UTA, Jon Leland Co-Founder and CEO, Popular Demand, Steven Paul, Chairman & CEO, SP Media Group SP Media Group,  Jared Geesey, EVP of International, Angel Studios, Katie Pryor Co-Founder, Film USA & Executive Director, Baton Rouge Film Commission, Samantha Masunaga, Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, Josh Rogin.  Brett Rosen, Manager, TFC Management & Productions, Joel Savitt, Founder & CEO, Bamboo Bridge, Wesley Wang, Director/Founder, Wesley Wang Media.

Building on the triumphant 2025 return to Los Angeles a responsive AFM offers attendees much more. The upgrades include additional space to network; the crowded bar and expanded new indoor areas to wheel and deal. 

At the Innovation Hub there will be expanded: demos, ‘fireside chats’ and newly designated arena for AFM attendees to delve into new technologies, live demos, and meet tech innovators developing screen entertainment. 

The post New Global Screen Economy Summit At AFM26 first appeared on .

 LATIN HEAT AT AFM 2026: November 11 – November 14, 2026

By Judi Jordan | LATIN HEAT

This year Latin Heat welcomes back AFM 2026 with a focus on What’s New. What’s Improved. What is More. What To See. And With More To Learn. So Plan Your Best AFM Ever. Building on the triumphant 2025 return to Los Angeles a responsive AFM offers attendees much more.

PART 1: AFM House

As a challenging year in local production winds down, a reboot at AFM 2026 offers an adrenaline shot. From November 10^th to November 14^th the 47^th year of the film market, and the 2^nd year at the location, the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel on the Avenue of the Stars.

Independent and creator filmmakers will meet buyers and encounter partners building slates across the new global screen economy: theatrical, television, streaming, mobile-first, and vertical platforms.

Building on the triumphant 2025 return to Los Angeles a responsive AFM offers attendees much more. The upgrades include additional space to network; the crowded bar and expanded new indoor areas to wheel and deal. 

Across the street CAA’s campus the new AFM House is home to the Innovation Hub expanded with more: demos, ‘fireside chats’ and newly designated arena for AFM attendees to delve into new technologies, live demos, and meet tech innovators developing screen entertainment. 

The expanded AFM Innovation Hub, in partnership with Marché du Film’s Cannes Next, and the North American debut of The Cinemas Club, will explore the future of theatrical exhibition and moviegoing. Over four days, Wednesday, November 11 through Saturday, November 14, 2026, AFM House. 

All of this added newness demands a smart schedule. Download the AFM26 app on your iOS or Android device. https://3301.applinks.guidebook.com/g/#/guides/afm26/?mobile_redirect=1

Pack an umbrella. Practice your pitch. Plan your most amazing AFM — And stay tuned for more coverage of one of the most important film market in the world, brought to you by Judi Jordan and our videographer Christian Rodrigo.

The post American Film Market Offers More In 2026 first appeared on .

By Judi Jordan | LATIN HEAT

Unless you’ve been vacationing on a desert island since May, you couldn’t have missed the roar of acclaim surrounding La Bola Negra. A 20-minute standing ovation at Cannes? Seriously? Cannes is a tough crowd. 

The film subsequently shared Cannes’ Best Director award and crossed the Atlantic to win Toronto’s coveted People’s Choice Award, a recognized gateway to Oscar recognition.

I was curious. Very.

Then came the Netflix screening invitation. I watched. Astonished. Moved. I got it.

A tour de force. 1000% Spanish. The rhythm, the colors, the old soul of this extraordinary land. Both real and surreal, La Bola Negra takes the most basic of places and renders them magical. It shocks. Charms. Intrigues. Stuns. Hurts. Angers. Astounds.

And satisfies.

The icing on the torta is the mysterious true-life thread of Spain’s martyred literary giant Federico Garcia Lorca, a ‘detail’ delicately revealed like Lorca’s phrases, never overplayed.

The Q&A was another revelation.

Two helmers are better than one.

Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, collectively known as Los Javis, have created a visually sumptuous, emotionally fearless epic for approximately €15 million. It looks and feels three times the budget.

These are calculated risk-takers committed to authenticity, including casting gay actors to portray gay men. To the observant film aficionado, the comfort between the actors feels natural, not stilted or novel. They wrote a leading role specifically for alternative pop star Guitarricadelafuente, hoping he would accept.

He did.

Playing Sebastián, the singer makes an arresting screen debut opposite Miguel Bernardeau, star of Zorro, whose Rafael is a noble athlete, now soldier—and prisoner. Their romantic connection, wounded souls, beautifully understated, becomes the beating heart of this extraordinary story.

Penélope Cruz delivers her own delicious moments, while Glenn Close contributes another intriguing dimension to a film rich with surprises.

The resulting collaboration between the Javis is especially interesting thanks to their contrasting creative temperaments. It makes for a great Q&A, a character study.

Calvo, the thoughtful, understated, disciplined planner, and Ambrossi, the playful, emotionally instinctive adventurer, are two chefs cooking a feast. They have the ingredients; together they balance tenacity, taste, timing, fluidity and surprise. Waiting for snow or actors it’s paid off.

Ambrossi calls their directing process “catharsis.” Very big on running a happy set, and not ‘dictating’ has rendered astounding results. 

They remain flexible, embracing an actor’s emotional state rather than rigidly adhering to a predetermined schedule. When Guitarricadelafuente first arrived to set, late from a delayed flight, visibly anxious, the directors pivoted, adapting to his emotional state as an opportunity: abandoning a quiet scene for the explosive opening sequence of wartime violence.

Catharsis totalmente.

Cinematographer Gris Jordana’s painterly compositions breathe art into the film’s violence and beauty. Using paintings to shape the heart-stopping visual canvas, the film moves fluidly among Spain’s turbulent early 20th century, the Spanish Civil War and modern life, binding the scars of history on subsequent generations.

The male gaze is unapologetically bold. Los Javis refuse to retreat from the bodies, souls, desire, courage and suffering of men—gay and heterosexual—or from the terrible cost of suspicion, repression and lives lived in shadows.

This is not a movie to watch on a small screen. The lyrical, unflinching cinematography, stunning production design and intimate performances transport us into those shadows.

We become voyeurs. And conspirators.

Netflix wisely gave La Bola Negra a 46-day exclusive theatrical run—the longest in the streamer’s history. Opening in U.S. cinemas October 16, La Bola Negra only hits the streaming platform on December 2. This is a film to be savored, experienced, discussed, pondered. Not merely viewed.

On its first U.S. premiere weekend, La Bola Negra debuted to $277.5k on four screens 2 in LA and 2 in NYC– numbers direct from Netflix Sunday in the first ever official box office grosses shared. It goes wider on 11/6. 

At home in Spain, La Bola Negra has become a must-see for Spaniards of all adult generations. It’s much more than a “gay” film. It’s a look in the rearview mirror—at what we all may have missed.

The ultimate genius of La Bola Negra: beneath its visual extravagance, sensual courage and historical ambition lies a painfully universal truth.

It’s about everything we lose when we deny ourselves the freedom to love—regardless of gender.

The post Catharsis and Crazy Genius: Spain’s Los Javis and the Triumph of ‘La Bola Negra’ first appeared on .