THE QUEEN OF SPAIN is a spirited film-within-a-film that pokes fun at Hollywood and Spain’s studio system in the mid-1950s.

Academy Award-winning director Fernando Trueba (BELLE EPOQUE) has assembled a lively star-studded cast that looks at studio films made under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. In THE QUEEN OF SPAIN, Spanish actress Macarena Granada (Penélope Cruz) returns home to Spain in the mid-1950s, after enjoying a successful career in Hollywood, to play Queen Isabella in an epic period film that has the local media buzzing. Once she arrives in Spain, she runs into former friends and colleagues while the film production goes through a roller coaster of emotional scenarios, including the return of a once-famous director (played by Antonio Resines), passionate affairs between crew members and the hovering presence of Franco’s regime.

THE QUEEN OF SPAIN is a spirited film-within-a-film that pokes fun at the studio system both in Hollywood and Spain, complete with its juicy gossips and larger than life filmmakers, while highlighting a critical period in Spanish society. The film contains many delightful references to Hollywood films and those jabs are enhanced by the presence of actors Cary Elwes (THE PRINCESS BRIDE), Mandy Patinkin (HOMELAND), Javier Cámara (TALK TO HER) and directors, J.A. Bayona (A MONSTER CALLS) and Arturo Ripstein (BLEAK STREET). The film marks Trueba’s third collaboration with Penélope Cruz with their first collaboration being BELLE EPOQUE, which won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and shot Penélope Cruz to critical fame.