Latido Films positions 'Carte Blanche' as a prestige genre piece — elevated action cinema with historical weight. Antonio Saura frames it as the kind of film that grips you and doesn't let go, promising audiences a visceral experience wrapped in legitimate war drama.
Word is Spain's genre filmmaking game has leveled up big time. Multiple quality productions at scale signal a coordinated push onto the international stage. But sources say the real conversation is about whether audiences are ready for unflinching colonial violence with no moral comfort zone.
'Carte Blanche' premiered May 12, 2026 via Variety's exclusive report. The film was shot in Almería's scrub-desert — same location David Lean used for 'Lawrence of Arabia' and Sergio Leone deployed for Spaghetti Westerns. Director Gerardo Herrero won a Best Picture Oscar as producer on 'The Secret in Their Eyes.'
This isn't feel-good cinema, and that's exactly the point. Latido is betting that 2026 audiences crave moral complexity over sanitized heroism — and with Spain mounting such an aggressive genre push at Cannes, someone's going to strike gold.
Latido Films has dropped their most audacious project yet onto the Cannes market, and it's not for the faint of heart. 'Carte Blanche,' a period war action film directed by Oscar-winning producer Gerardo Herrero of 'The Secret in Their Eyes' fame, pulls zero punches — literally or figuratively. The movie dramatizes Spain's disastrous 1921 Rif War against Berber tribesmen in Morocco, centering on an eight-man elite Spanish Legion unit that descends into horrifying violence during a revenge mission gone catastrophically wrong.
The plot centers on a sergeant whose brother was tortured and murdered in the massacre of Spanish soldiers. When his squad launches a raid on a local Berber village seeking retribution, the mission quickly devolves into what the Variety report describes as "racist-fueled rape, torture and slaughter" before becoming, ultimately, a suicide mission. Cornered by local marksmen in an arid canyon with nowhere to run, these soldiers discover that vengeance comes with a body count far higher than they anticipated — and not just among their enemies.
Antonio Saura, head of Latido Films, is betting big on this project: "'Carte Blanche' is a gripping action film that does not let you breathe while watching it and stays with you when the film finishes," he said in a statement. That's precisely the kind of talk you'd expect from a company positioning itself at the forefront of Spain's emerging quality genre wave — but make no mistake, this isn't your standard war movie where the good guys win and conscience remains intact.
Fast-rising Spanish star Ivan Pellicer, known for 'Querer,' plays Faura, the one squad member who attempts to maintain some semblance of moral compass as things spiral into chaos. He's joined by Salva Reina ('The 47') and Victor Clavijo ('The Wait') as the squad's psychotic sergeant — the driving force behind this descent into colonial atrocity. The film was shot in Almería's signature scrub-desert, that same sun-blasted terrain where David Lean filmed 'Lawrence of Arabia' and Sergio Leone crafted his Spaghetti Western masterpieces.
Visually, at least, 'Carte Blanche' is in distinguished company. What's most intriguing here is context: Latido brought 'Carte Blanche' to Cannes as part of a broader batch of buzzy quality genre movies emerging from Spain this year, marking the country as a serious contender at the Marché du Film. The strategy appears deliberate — skip the sanitized war drama route entirely and go straight for historical ugliness without Hollywood gloss. Whether international buyers bite on such uncompromising material remains to be seen, but Latido clearly believes there's an appetite for war cinema that refuses to flinch.
