I’m Catalan filmmaker Pere Vilà Barceló isn’t afraid to sort out tough matters in his films – and make you suppose and speak about them.
His 2014 movie The Grave tells the story of a person who hears in regards to the discovery of a mass grave and escapes from a nursing house to confront his previous on the location of the Battle of the Ebro, the longest and largest battle of the Spanish Civil Battle. He additionally is among the administrators of the 2018 movie The Wind Is This, in regards to the emotional journey of two teenage ladies affected by an consuming dysfunction.
Now, 13 years after The Stoning of Saint Stephen, about an aged, sick man threatened with eviction who’s satisfied that he’s residing with the presence of his deceased spouse and daughter, he returns to the Karlovy Fluctuate Worldwide Movie Competition (KVIFF) to convey his new movie to the Crystal Globe Competitors of its 59th version.
When a River Turns into the Sea, starring Claud Hernández, Àlex Brendemühl, Laia iMarull, and Bruna Cusí, once more guarantees tough viewing, necessary debate, and soul-searching.
“The heroine of his sixth movie is Gaia, a younger archaeology pupil, whose relationship with herself, and with these round her, is perpetually marked by a traumatic occasion,” notes a synopsis on the KVIFF web site, which describes the movie as an “uncompromising, introspective probe into the soul of a lady who’s sexually abused. … Initially, Gaia can’t discover the phrases to explain her state of affairs, not to mention the braveness to discuss it.”
Earlier than its KVIFF world premiere on Tuesday, July 8, Vilà Barceló talked to THR about When a River Turns into the Sea, why he isn’t afraid to sort out delicate points and does so with a very deep sense of accountability, the imagery and metaphorical facets of his new movie, and what he may do subsequent.
Why did you wish to tackle the subject of sexual assault with this story and why now?
In my earlier movie, titled The Wind Is This, I explored consuming problems. I undertook that venture after spending a yr involved with youngsters.
Gender-based violence emerged as a problem that wanted to be addressed. Greater than ever, I felt my cinema needed to tackle extra social accountability. I felt the necessity to become involved. I began some movie workshops eight years in the past with youngsters aged 16 and 17. I met ladies who had been raped and sexually assaulted. The reality is that, as an individual, I felt the necessity to use my career as a software for consciousness.
Though the movie is being launched now, I’ve really been engaged on it for eight years. Sadly, it’s an issue that doesn’t go away. The truth is, within the final 48 hours right here in Spain, there have been six gender-based murders: 5 ladies and a two-year-old baby have been killed.
It’s a narrative set in Spain, however sadly additionally a common story. What interviews and analysis did you do to dive so deeply into a girl’s psyche and struggles and what feminine enter and steering did you search?
This was a very powerful a part of the venture. After assembly the primary ladies in that faculty, I reached out to a number of foundations, associations, and above all, the SIEs – public companies specializing in care and help for ladies, kids, and youngsters affected by gender violence. This led me to conduct over 100 interviews with ladies who trusted me and shared their life experiences. Rape, assaults, psychological violence, ladies of all ages, married, with kids, or very younger ladies. I additionally spoke with many psychologists and visited shelters for ladies survivors who had fled their properties.
This whole course of modified me as an individual. I underwent a private awakening that altered my perspective. And the extra I superior in my private course of, the extra the movie venture advanced.
You employ photographs and metaphors from nature (river and sea, the sounds of birds, inexperienced landscapes, even the title Gaia) and the metaphor of archaeological excavations to color the image of ladies’s expertise. How did you discover and resolve to make use of nature and excavations as becoming photographs?
Archaeology has been a part of me since I used to be a toddler. I had gone on quite a few archaeological digs. Maybe that’s why I perceive individuals as a succession of layers. We’re strata, a stratigraphy constructed through the years. If we ever surprise who we’re, what we’re, what we’ve finished, or why we predict or act a sure means, we’d like introspection. We have to excavate inside ourselves.
From that standpoint, archaeology has at all times fascinated me as a software for historic analysis, a method to dig into the Earth, its pure parts, to know who we’re and why we act as we do. So, an archaeological dig appeared like probably the most significant house for the protagonist to have the belief that she had been assaulted, raped.
Throughout the documentation course of for the venture, via the interviews, I additionally explored all the continuing analysis and advances in archaeology from a gender perspective. That once more impressed me deeply, a brand new layer of change in my outlook. Thus, archaeology, with its layers and ranges that should be excavated to know a given historic second, felt like the appropriate method to painting the characters I used to be creating. A younger woman experiences rape and initially isn’t even conscious of it. She then goes via a collection of phases much like mourning. And abruptly, she feels the necessity to perceive. What was her private course of that made her reside that second as one thing regular? What sort of schooling had she acquired to normalize gender violence? What historic processes occurred round her to create this society the place violence in opposition to ladies is normalized? To search out solutions, she undertakes an inner excavation we don’t see. However I attempt to categorical it with the metaphor of excavations and the presence of nature.
The idea of the Earth, and its spirituality, is central. The Earth isn’t ours. The sense of possession we frequently venture onto the planet is a flawed perspective. Trying again at early human historical past, this notion of possession didn’t exist. People have been a part of the Earth, not its house owners. That is additionally the place the movie’s archaeological dimension comes into play: the connection to a previous the place we lived immersed in nature, not separate from it.
Nature, to me, has its personal spirituality, which lies in its chaotic concord. If people don’t intervene, every part finds its place. It might appear to be an unfair steadiness from our viewpoint, however it’s a steadiness. Nature lives and easily is. I needed this idea to be one other layer throughout the movie’s narrative construction.
You present us the method of dealing with trauma, which can’t be rushed. How did you select parts, akin to sound, cinematography, mild and shadows, dialogue and extra, to painting this sluggish therapeutic?
Once more, all of the conversations with ladies survivors of gender violence reply this query. These have been conversations that would final 5 or 6 hours straight, and we frequently resumed them later. Some ladies allowed us to movie their reflections and even intimate moments, like one younger girl displaying us the place the place she was raped.
The phrases they shared with me, the precision of particulars, the feelings, all of it step by step turned photographs. Photographs that needed to be devoted to what they’d advised me. My aim from the beginning was to convey to the viewers the sensation I had when leaving these conversations, a mixture of feelings arduous to decipher, feelings that took me days or even weeks to digest. That’s what the movie needed to be. That was the emotional rhythm that, in cinema, needed to be translated into narrative rhythm.
All of this led to a really natural means of working with sound, imagery, and performances. The entire crew internalized this. That allowed the technical facets to align with the human ones.
How did you go in regards to the casting to search out the appropriate individuals to painting such complicated points?
That is the third movie I’ve labored on with Àlex Brendemühl, a unprecedented actor and a very good individual. We perceive one another very nicely. A lot of our conversations are extra private and human than cinematic. I’m fortunate he’s at all times had a lot belief in me. In that sense, I at all times prioritize character, human qualities.
With Bruna Cusí and Laia Marull, we spoke beforehand, received to know one another, and talked in regards to the venture. We agreed on each the method and the necessity for the movie’s theme. Their appearing expertise is immense, however their human qualities additionally shine on display.
As for Claud Hernández, she’s really an unimaginable actress. She was the one who contacted me after I had already been looking for the lead actress for 2 years. She noticed an announcement in regards to the venture whereas nonetheless in drama college, and that’s the way it all started. She totally dedicated to the venture. She immersed herself within the character even earlier than there was a script or dialogue. She explored feelings via our conversations and her personal talks with ladies survivors of gender violence. She tailored to my fragmented means of working, 4 years of filming in blocks, months aside, stuffed with reflection and conversations with survivors.
It was an area for private progress, for her to develop and reside her life. However her capacity to carry onto the character and make it evolve was extraordinary. Working together with her is undoubtedly some of the necessary occasions in my profession as a filmmaker.
What are you engaged on subsequent?
Along with the movie’s manufacturing firm, Fromzero, we’re engaged on a documentary collection which, alongside the movie, will type a part of an academic venture aimed toward discussing gender-based violence with youthful generations.
On the identical time, I’m additionally engaged on a venture about bullying, about aesthetic stress in early adolescence. A venture in regards to the lack of values in academic facilities. A venture the place I’m making use of the identical working methodology as I utilized in When a River Turns into the Sea.
As I’ve defined, I imagine in cinema’s accountability, and I’m dedicated to making a venture that fosters social consciousness. I do know we received’t change the world, however we can assist some individuals. I have to imagine on this transformative energy of cinema.
‘When a River Turns into the Sea’
Courtesy of KVIFF
‘When a River Turns into the Sea’
Courtesy of KVIFF