Angélica Guerra

World Screen Weekly, September 4, 2008

International VP

Caracol International

Having started in the industry on the legal and financial side, Angélica Guerra has gotten to know the television business on a macro level, observing it always from a global perspective. This, she says, has had an effect on what she loves most about being an executive in the entertainment market.

“I love what I do because it’s fun, because there is no monotony in this business,” she says. “Every day there are new things to explore, new clients and new markets to open up. I like the possibility of permanently reinventing the business, working with new platforms and different models.” And this love for reinvention has served her well throughout her various roles.

Guerra, a lawyer by training, began her work in Caracol’s Miami office opening the international distribution department, and took part in developing the business structure of Gentv Channel 8, a property of the Caracol Group, as COO. In returning to Colombia, Guerra held the position of development manager for Caracol, structuring the company’s new international production outfit. Now serving as the company’s international VP, Guerra has again directed her focus on restructuring. “We have stopped working with external agents in order to have a team consisting 100 percent of Caracol salesmen that specialize in each market,” she explains. “This has brought great advantages, like opening new markets, which is what we are focusing on at this moment.”

The company’s current roster of international adaptations is also top of mind right now for Guerra. “We are extremely concentrated on this, so that the results are even better than the client’s expectations. I am also working on developing businesses around new platforms and on creating tailor-made productions or co-production agreements, using Caracol’s infrastructure in Colombia.”

For MIPCOM, the company is hoping to add to its international production slate with new titles such as Love Her to Death, about a woman whose husband leaves her for her best friend, and she is now penniless with two daughters and must start her life from scratch; The Cartel, which follows ten friends and their rise and fall through the ranks of one of the world’s most dangerous drug cartels; Who Will Love Maria?, in which a woman approaching her self-imposed deadline to become a mother looks for prospective candidates to become the father of her unborn child; and Neighbors, the story of Oscar, a raucous taxi driver who, after winning the lottery will buy an apartment in a high-class building and will change the life of Tatiana and the other neighbors forever.

—By Kristin Brzoznowski