Netflix premieres Mango, a film centred around one of the agricultural treasures of Malaga's Axarquía area

From the peach fields of the Catalonian 'Alcarrás' to the 'sea of plastic' in the greenhouses of Almeria province in Andalucía, films and series have always found in the Spanish countryside, a unique landscape in which to set the most intriguing story lines.

Now mangos from the Axarquía area of Malaga, which are consumed all over Europe, are set to hit the screens through a Netflix film. It is a romantic drama directed by Danish director Mehdi Avaz , who after the successes of A Wonderful Life (2023) and In Tuscany (2022), intends to repeat the move with another film set in the Malaga countryside, which premieres this Friday 7 November. The title says it all: 'Mango'.

The exotic setting of the sunny rural estates of the Axarquía and a story of emotional conflict and positivity are the distinctive elements of this new film which stars two Danish stars, Josephine Park (The Nurse) and Dar Salim, face of Game of Thrones and The Pact. The story is about an ex-lawyer who, after experiencing a tragedy, lives as a refugee on a mango plantation in Malaga, which is also going through hard times. A hotel manager arrives there who, as well as taking care of her teenage daughter, wants to open a new resort in this idyllic rural spot, although she will have to overcome the owner's objections to do so.

Filmmaker Mehdi Avaz once again cooks up a plot based on a romantic drama with touches of comedy and a mother-daughter generational conflict, but with mangoes as the main ingredient. A fruit he discovered when he arrived in Malaga in 2023 to write another project and was taken to a mango plantation where he soon visualised a film.

The following year he was back in the Axarquía, making the filming coincide with the annual mango harvesting season in September. The main location was a secluded and discreet finca in Benamocarra belonging to Eurofresh, a company whose 40-year-old organic mango orchards serve as a backdrop and plot for the story. A brand that the Danish team expressly sought out, as it exports these fruits to the Nordic country, where it is well established.

"They came to us with this story that had a direct connection to Malaga and although it could have been set in a winery or any other family business, the cultivation of mangoes gives it a very special connection with the land and the hard work in the fields," explains María Cabello, producer of the Malaga company Anima Stillking, which was involved in the film by Drive Studios in association with Rocket Road Pictures and Nordisk Film Distribution for Netflix.

"What was relevant was not only the filming, but also the fact that the plot is also set in the province," says the filmmaker, who points out that 'Mango' was also a "special" project as it was the first filming in Malaga of her new company, which she had founded months earlier together with two other executives from Fresco Film, Silvia Aráez and Cristina Armario.

"The filming was done at the end of August and in September and it was very nice because all the crew that didn't come from Denmark were from Malaga, which is an idea that we sell to everyone who wants to come and film," says Cabello. The executive producer, who has also been very busy this year with the filming in Asturias of the next instalment of the Hunger Games saga, says they also filmed in Almuñecar (Granada province) to shoot in its water park by the sea, as well as filming at the airfield in Trapiche and Frigiliana, which has also appeared in the Netflix production, Two Graves, which became the most watched non-English speaking series worldwide on the streaming platform for several weeks.

Some scenes were shot at the popular El Mirador de Frigiliana restaurant which was quite an ordeal for the crew as they had to "carry by hand" all the filming equipment up the steep streets of the town as the area is pedestrianised. Added to this was the heat: "We warned them that at the end of August and in September it is very hot in Malaga and shooting in the countryside didn't make it easy, but well, as it coincided with the time of the harvest we ate a lot of mangoes," says María Cabello, who highlights the unprecedented image that this Netflix fiction production offers of the Axarquía.

Other films shot in Malaga in recent months include The Girlfriend (Amazon Prime Video), starring and directed by American Robin Wright, which has accumulated 25 million views; The City is Ours (Movistar), a mafia plot set in Liverpool and the Costa del Sol; The Fate on Disney+, an accurate contemporary portrayal of the world of bullfighting in the TikTok era; The Centre (Movistar), a look at modern Spanish espionage with scenes also shot in the Axarquía and the aforementioned 'Two Graves' , about the disappearance of young women from Frigiliana.