Taking Firm Steps with Rebolucion Spain's Felipe Gomez Aparicio

Felipe Gomez Aparicio was born in 1977, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He earned his degree in film production at the Cinematographic Research Centre (CIC). His work as a director has garnered a number of international accolades including multiple Cannes Lions, Clio Awards, Epica Awards, the Argentine Creative Circle’s El Diente Award, YouTube Ad of the Year, and the Martín Fierro Award, among others. The Perfect David, his feature debut, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and travelled to twenty-two International Film Festivals. He just finished his first TV series as a director, El Amor Después Del Amor.

Q> How are the first days of Rebolucion Spain?

Felipe> The first days in Spain are, as the name indicates, a bit of a revolution, because we are setting up absolutely everything, finding our place in the market, and being receptive to the projects that arrive. At the moment, we are working on a very nice and creatively interesting project with Norman Bates. We have known this market for a long time, but the opening always brings something new. We have to go step by step, meeting new people and taking firm steps.

Q> How is Rebolucion Spain's roster of directors constituted?

Felipe> We have a roster of directors that we like very much, who work globally and internationally, some of them are Spanish and from different countries around the world. We are also closing agreements with new directors to reinforce the local Spanish sector. We are very interested in positioning ourselves in this country as a Spanish production company, beyond the fact that we are a Rebolucion office and that the Rebolucion brand will always be present in each of the offices. My partner Ramón Corominas, who is the executive producer of this project, is Spanish and from Madrid. I have Spanish Argentinean children, so it is an interesting cultural mix that is being generated here.

Q> How do you see the advertising production market in Europe, from Spain? What is it like to produce in Europe, based in Spain?

Felipe> I see the market in Spain as very competitive, but at the same time that means that we all have to be better. I think it is a market that has many creative possibilities and that fluctuates according to what is happening in the world at the moment. In Europe there are many directors who do things very well and many production companies that work very well. I feel that at this moment we have to look for quick solutions to problems that arise very quickly. For that, I feel that the Spanish market has an advantage, it is a very strategic place creatively and geographically to expand Rebolucion to the rest of Europe, in perfect harmony with Rebolucion UK.

Q> What works of yours as a director would you highlight in recent times and why?

Felipe> In advertising, the last project I shot was a campaign for the Ronald McDonald Foundation for TBWA. I liked it a lot and I also felt identified with the problem of the family. It's about how a family has to move from their hometown to a big city to take care of a child who has a serious health condition. I connected with the story because of my own experiences, from my childhood. Also, I thought it was a very interesting film at a creative and sensitive level, where I could put a lot of myself and participate a lot in the scripts. We were able to add Fernando Velázquez, who is a great Spanish film music composer.

Q> Tell us about El Perfecto David, how did the film come about and how did you develop it?

Felipe> It's my first feature film, it took me a long time to work on it, to prepare it. I understood that the times of advertising are totally different from the times of fiction and cinema. We shot with a great international team, with a director of photography like Adolfo Veloso, who has enormous prestige. The film premiered in New York at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, it had very good international reviews. We toured twenty-two festivals where we won awards. We went to Italy, Mostra de Sao Paulo, Warsaw, and many more: they were very good opportunities for my film to be known. In Argentina, we had a commercial premiere and now we are looking for a platform for the film to follow its path.

Q> In fact, you recently made a series for a platform.

Felipe> I just finished a series that is a biopic about an Argentine musician called Fito Páez. The series is called El Amor Después Del Amor, and it's going to have a global release in April on Netflix. It took us a long time to work, it was a hundred and twenty-five days of filming, where I really learned a lot. Coming from the experience of my first feature film, it was like the reaffirmation of being able to move between the two worlds, the advertising world and the fiction world. Also aiming at branded content, which I think is something I find interesting. When a director can work in both worlds, integrate them, and perhaps achieve content with a little more relevance to the public, which I think is what is sometimes lacking in shorter advertising pieces.