Canary Islands will host another major international shoot this year. The production, entitled The Island, will take the tenerife island two famous American performers: Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara, under the direction of the prestigious Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski. The actors, who are also a couple in real life, will end up in Santa Cruz de Tenerife to give life to a couple –also– in fiction.
Although the dates and specific locations for this new filming have not yet been revealed, yesterday there was final confirmation that the production will end up in Tenerife. “We are in the first conversations to specify the days,” the sources consulted specified in this regard.
The first clue about the possibility that this new shoot had chosen the Canary Islands came out just last Thursday, in the middle of Holy Week. One of the Oscar-winning actor’s follower profiles on Twitter, specifically @jphoenixupdates, released the news: “Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara will shoot Pawel Pawlikowski’s The Island in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain.”
In addition to the confirmation of the shooting, the only information that has come out so far is that the local company that will be in charge of offering international production companies the necessary support in Tenerife will be Sur Film. In other words, the technical team will be largely Canarian. Sur Film is already more than seasoned in this type of work. Not surprisingly, he has films on his resume such as Doctor Who, Fast & Furious, Jason Bourne, In the Heart of the Sea, The Wicher or Wonder Woman 1984. In other words, this Canarian production company has been present –and in a very active way– in practically all of the international filming that has made a stopover in the Archipelago up to now.
Furthermore, the arrival of the Polish Pawel Pawlikowski in Tenerife is great news on its own. He is probably one of the most interesting film directors of those who have passed through the Canary Islands so far. This screenwriter and film director is responsible for Ida (2013), which in addition to being a real bombshell, was the first Polish production to win an Oscar for best foreign-language film. Another of his great successes was, in 2018, the Cold War tape.
The film, set in the 1950s, is partly based on the lives of the director’s parents. It was the big winner at the European Film Awards that year, where it won the award for best film, best director, screenwriter and best editing. For her, Pawlikowski was awarded best director at Cannes. He was also recognized at the Goyas and earned three Oscar nominations.
It has emerged from the film that will be filmed on the Tenerife scene that it is a thriller written and directed by Pawlikoski himself, in which he will tell the story of an American couple who decide to get away from the hectic life of the city to build their own paradise in a desert island. There, they will live off the land until a millionaire decides to build a luxury hotel on the island. The story is set in the 1930s and inspired by real events.
