Magaluf Ghost Town
Magaluf, Mallorca, a quiet coastal town that becomes one of the most saturated areas with tourists in summer. How do its inhabitants survive this low-cost tourist paradise?
Synopsis
Strange things are happening in Magaluf: the smell of piss and blood, police cars and ambulances cross the streets without anyone paying attention to them, screams in the middle of the night… Magaluf is just a small, quiet town on the island of Mallorca that many have ventured to call the Balearic Twin Peaks. Its citizens are torn between everyday cursing and genuine holiday pleasure, a place that has become the European paradigm of low-cost tourism based on unbridled nighttime entertainment. A million tourists invade the streets of Magaluf during the summer, as if they were specters who transform public space into a theme park where almost everything is allowed.
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Magaluf try to live with the contradictions of this tourism model that feels like an invasion but also generates millions of euros in the restaurant sector, jobs and opportunities for many people who could not survive anywhere else without the characteristics of Magaluf.
Magaluf Ghost Town is a choral portrait of a community during the off-season and the high season, from a tone of mystery, close to the thriller but without losing sight of the costumbrist comedy, mixing documentary and fiction. It is a story of international scope about the dreams of a town that is only trying to survive in a touristified context, and also a reflection on what it means to be a tourist in Europe.
Official selection at:
Editor's Note
The truth is that I no longer remember if Magaluf is the most wonderful place in the world or a real nightmare.
We have been with the myth of Magaluf for many years. I also came there for the first time in search of that legend, to know if all that was true. The media have created a very stigmatized narrative about what this small town in Mallorca is: English tourists, alcohol, fights, sex, sun and beach. The sensationalist news about Magaluf has its annual space in the news to continue feeding the monster, even inventing new concepts to make fiction grow: mamading, balconing, Shagaluf (which means something like follaluf)… Magaluf is a crazy party without limits, an image that works as a lure for leisure but that the citizens of the town experience as a curse.
But what exactly is Magaluf? Or rather… What can Magaluf become?
Magaluf is a neon-lit set ideal for building legends, telling lies and reflecting on the ways in which tourist spaces in decline are represented in the collective imagination. The constant possibility that something bad will happen. Something strange. This is a film of fabulations and disappearances. Everyday plots that coexist with phantasmagorical situations: a mood of strangeness and tension. In the midst of the apparent normality, the relationship with tourists is presented as the arrival of a mysterious visitor, a vampire, a living dead…
Magaluf Ghost Town is the choral story of a town where we will witness the coexistence of some characters with their environment, the portrait of a town that is not master of its own destiny, with a tone that oscillates between costumbrist comedy, drama and the atmosphere of a horror film.
Title: Magaluf Ghost Town
International title:Magaluf Ghost Town
Gender: Documentary
Duration: 90 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Original language: Spanish and English
Locations: Magaluf
Year of production: 2021
Producer: Boogaloo Films, Little Big Story, and Mosaic
Co-produced by: Movistar+, France Télévisions, RTS and IB3
With the support of: Institut Català d’Empreses Culturals, CNC, PROCIREP – Societé des producteurs et de l’ANGOA
Direction and script: Miguel Ángel Blanca
Production: Bernat Manzano, Miguel Ángel Blanca, Valérie Montmartin, Miguel EEk
Editor: Javier Gil Alonso, Miguel Angel Blanca, Ariadna Ribas
Director of Photography: Raúl Cuevas
Direct Sound: Cosmic d’Allessandro
Sound Design: Iban R. Gabarró
Music: Sara Fontán, Edu Pou