Second features are where a director’s momentum is either confirmed or quietly lost. For Panamanian filmmaker Mariel García Spooner, the company that has backed her since her debut has just bet on confirmation, and on a premise built around three women who refuse to let their sixties be the end of the story.

As Variety reported, Latin American distributor Cineplex has picked up North and South American sales rights to “La Residencia”, García Spooner’s follow-up to her hit “Algo Azul”. The deal came out of Sanfic Industria, the industry arm of Santiago de Chile’s Sanfic festival, where it competed in the WIP Iberoamericana section, which screens Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese films still in post-production. The dramedy follows three friends in their mid-sixties who join forces to face their money troubles and reinvent their future by creating a social club for seniors.

Cineplex managing partner Diana Dudek, who works alongside co-founder and general manager Elba McAllister, framed the pickup as continuity. “We have known Mariel for several years and have been working with her since her first film, ‘Algo Azul.’ We like her way of telling entertaining, relatable stories with a deeper underlying message,” she said, adding that the team “immediately connected with the story of these three friends” from the moment it read the screenplay.

García Spooner describes the film as an intimate portrait of Cecilia, Rocío and Martina, “three friends who begin to question what they want for their future and how to remain independent while everything around them is changing.” In her words, “the film explores friendship, the fear of growing older and above all, the possibility of starting over without losing who you are.”

Colombian actresses Xilena Aycardi and Marcela Carvajal lead the cast, alongside Panamanian performers Diana Abouganem, Massiel Mas, Diego de Obaldía, Miguel Melfi, Beatriz García and Gregory Manrique. The film was produced by the director’s Panama-based company Hello October, which also produced “Algo Azul”, in which a hotel worker flees in someone else’s wedding dress determined to marry that same day. That debut was released theatrically in 11 territories before playing on HBO Max and Prime Video.

After screening at Málaga WIP, “La Residencia” won the Latino Film Institute Work in Progress finishing fund at LALIFF 2026, presented in collaboration with Amazon MGM Studios, and Barcelona-based Only Postproduction joined to handle colour grading after a connection made at Mafiz. Now picture-locked, the film is in the final stages of post-production ahead of its festival launch, and Dudek says Cineplex is “confident that we will find the right partners to bring this film to audiences across different international markets.”

Santiago was not a one-title trip for Cineplex. The company also took Colombian and Latin American rights to Yull Nuñez’s “The Cry of Serankwa”, another WIP title, and its recent slate includes the documentary “Yuma” and Klych López’s “Irreparable”, in which Marcela Valencia and Marcela Mar play estranged sisters whose reunion reopens long-buried resentments, bound for Tallinn Black Nights and then Mar del Plata.

Tags: festival deal, Algo Azul, Cineplex, La Residencia, Latin American cinema, Mariel García Spooner