Ex Fabula director Sergio Karmy leads Quijote Films’ strategic growth drive

Signaling new growth plans, leading Chilean company Quijote Films (“The Settlers”) has tapped former Fabula strategy and development manager Sergio Karmy to lead the company’s new business activities.

“Since its inception, Quijote has been characterized by the production of authorial works with an international reach, which are awarded and premiered around the world. The success of the established model and the good financial health of the company have allowed us to invest in opening a new strategy department within the company, where we develop our own projects internally,” said Quijote Films founder Giancarlo Nasi. , which opened an office in the Los Angeles office a few years ago, adding that Quijote, operating from the Chilean capital Santiago and Los Angeles, aims to “generate new business models.”

“The idea is to use our proven capacity to raise public funds, private equity investments and partnerships with streaming platforms and broadcasters around the world to expand into documentaries, series and more mainstream genres, always maintaining excellence and quality maintain what we have strived for,” says Nasi. told Variety.

As Quijote’s new Director of Strategy, Karmy will lead the new projects department, where the company will explore more commercial genres, including romantic comedies, adventure, youth sports and a variety of non-fiction projects.

“Quijote has a long history of working in co-production. It has been the model by which all his films have been financed,” Karmy said.

According to Nasi, Quijote has made more than 20 feature films in areas such as Chile, Colombia, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, Argentina and Peru and has produced pictures in more than 22 countries, including Mexico, Poland, France, Taiwan, Sweden and Great Britain

Case in point: Chile’s official submission to the Oscars, ‘The Settlers’, a Fipresci winner at Un Certain Regard at Cannes, had three other international producers in addition to Quijote, as well as four co-producers coming from France (Cine Sud Promotion ), Denmark (Snowglobe), Sweden (Film I Väst) and Germany (Sutor Kolonko).

“My role will be to oversee the projects and work on the financial structure, including streamers as potential partners. In other words, always work with producers, always take advantage of Quijote’s great ability to secure public funding,” said Karmy. He also pointed to seeking capital partners and combining diverse financing sources to boost international distribution of the projects.

Armed with an MBA in economics, he plans to approach the content in terms of business opportunities. “Giancarlo has a very solid creative development team. I come to create relationships with platforms, with investors, to create business models, different structures and financing methods to make good films,” he said Variety.

This year, Quijote is participating in Toronto (TIFF) with two films that it co-produces: “Horizonte” by the Colombian Cesar Acevedo in the Discovery section of the festival and in the official selection with “Los Tortuga” by the Spaniard Belén Funes. “Zafari” by Venezuela’s Mariana Rondón competes in San Sebastian’s Horizontes Latinos sidebar.