Magaluf Ghost Town

Magaluf, Mallorca, a quiet coastal town that becomes one of the most saturated tourist areas in summer, how do its inhabitants survive in this low cost tourist paradise?

Synopsis

Strange things are happening in Magaluf: the smell of piss and blood, police cars and ambulances crossing the streets without anyone giving them importance, screams in the middle of the night… Magaluf is just a small and 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 nightlife entertainment. A million tourists invade the streets of Magaluf during the summer, as if they were spectres that transform the public space into a theme park where almost everything is allowed.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Magaluf try to live with the contradictions of this tourist model that feels like an invasion but also generates millions of euros in the catering 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 high season, from a tone of mystery, close to a 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 just trying to survive in a touristic context, and also a reflection on what it means to be a tourist in Europe.

Official selection in:

Director’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 many years with the myth of Magaluf. I also arrived there for the first time in search of that tale, to know if all of it was true. The media have created a very stigmatized story about what this small town in Mallorca is: English tourists, alcohol, fights, sex, sun and beach. The sensationalist news about Magaluf have their annual space in the news to keep feeding the monster, even inventing new concepts to make the fiction grow: mamading, balconing, Shagaluf…. Magaluf is a crazy party without limits, an image that works as a leisure attraction but that the local citizens live as a curse.

But what is Magaluf exactly? Or rather… What can Magaluf be?

Magaluf is an ideal set with neon lights where you can build legends, tell lies and reflect on the forms of representation of decadent tourist spaces in the collective imagination. The constant possibility of something bad happening. 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 apparent normality, the relationship with the tourists is posed 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 genre comedy, drama and the atmosphere of a horror film.

Title: Magaluf Ghost Town
International Title: Magaluf Ghost Town
Genre: Documentary
Length: 90 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Original Language: Spanish and English
Locations: Magaluf
Year of Production: 2021
Production Company: Boogaloo Films, Little Big Story y 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

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)