Mallorca and the Balearics on Film: from The Night Manager to Cloud Atlas

The Night Manager (2016): Roper’s island fortress

Susanne Bier’s series of John le Carré’s novel, with Tom Hiddleston as the hotel night manager Jonathan Pine and Hugh Laurie as the arms dealer Richard Roper, the “worst man in the world”, moved Roper’s home from the Caribbean to Mallorca. His fortress-like villa is Sa Fortalesa, a 17th-century fort on the bay of Pollença in the north of the island, now a private estate.

The fortress is private, but the north of the island is yours to explore: the road out to Cap de Formentor, with its lighthouse and its cliffs high above the sea, is one of the great drives of the Mediterranean.

Cap de Formentor →

Cloud Atlas (2012): Sa Calobra and Port de Sóller

Tom Tykwer and Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Cloud Atlas, from David Mitchell’s novel, tells six stories across five centuries, with Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Grant each playing several roles. Its Mallorca scenes were filmed at Sa Calobra, where the Torrent de Pareis gorge meets the sea, and in the harbour of Port de Sóller.

The road down to Sa Calobra, twisting through the Tramuntana in a famous knotted bend, is an adventure of its own; boats also run round the coast from Port de Sóller.

The Crown: Mallorca as the French coast

For its fifth and sixth seasons, Netflix’s The Crown used Mallorca to play the south of France, filming at Sant Elm, looking out to the island of Sa Dragonera, in Port de Sóller and in the mountain village of Valldemossa.

Valldemossa, with its honey-coloured houses, its monastery and its views down the valley, is one of the loveliest villages on the island; come in the morning, before the day trippers.

Valldemossa village walk →

Evil Under the Sun and The Mallorca Files

Mallorca has a long film history, going back to the 1920s. One of its best-known classics is Guy Hamilton’s Evil Under the Sun (1982), from Agatha Christie’s novel, with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot among the guests of an island hotel, with Maggie Smith and Diana Rigg; there is no official trailer online, so we do not embed one.

The island is also the star of its own detective series: The Mallorca Files, first shown in 2019, pairs a British detective with a German colleague in the Palma police, and solves its cases all over the island.

Ibiza on film: More (1969) and the legend of Es Vedrà

Barbet Schroeder made his first film, More, on Ibiza, an island he had known for years. It follows a young German student who follows an American girl to the island, into a hippie summer that turns dark, and its music was written by Pink Floyd, who released the soundtrack as an album in 1969. The film was shown again at Cannes, in the Cannes Classics programme, in 2015.

Off Ibiza’s west coast rises Es Vedrà, the island’s most magical sight. A long-told local story holds that it appears as Bali Ha’i in the film of South Pacific (1958); we have not been able to confirm it, but the rock looks every bit the part at sunset.

There is no official trailer for this film on the studio’s or distributor’s own channels, so we do not embed one.

The ULTIMATE Ibiza Island Guide →

Formentera on film: Sex and Lucía (2001)

Julio Medem’s Sex and Lucía, with Paz Vega, is a love story set partly on Formentera, the smallest of the inhabited Balearic islands, and the island’s lighthouse, its caves and its beaches are part of its spell. Cap de Barbaria, with its lighthouse on the cliffs at the island’s southern tip, and the white sands of Ses Illetes became places of pilgrimage after the film.

There is no official trailer for this film on the studio’s or distributor’s own channels, so we do not embed one.

Film festivals in Palma

Each autumn, the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival brings independent films from around the world to Palma, with premieres, talks and guests from the industry. Look out too for summer screenings under the stars in the island’s towns.

Our advice

Watch The Night Manager before you drive out to Formentor, and Cloud Atlas before the road down to Sa Calobra. Keep a morning for Valldemossa, and if you are crossing to Ibiza, watch More on the ferry.

Over to you. Which island film do you love, and which scene would you add? Tell us below or in our forum: we read every message, and the best suggestions will join this page.

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