The Sevillian director Amodeo participates in the Official Section with Las Gentiles, and Violeta Salama presents, out of competition, her debut feature, Alegría.
Pan de limón con semillas de amapola, the latest film by Benito Zambrano, stars in a special session at the Lope de Vega Theatre.
Seville, 7 Noviembre.- The 18th Seville Festival welcomed three Andalusian filmmakers on its third day. On the one hand, Santi Amodeo, who will compete for the Giraldillo de Oro award with Las Gentiles, a film that has its world premiere in Seville, the hometown of the director. It is a film that represents a return to the independent spirit of The Pilgrim Factor (2000), Astronauts (2003) and Dog's Head (2006). Violeta Salama participates in the Official Section Out of Competition, with Alegría, her feature film debut. And the filmmaker Benito Zambrano (Solas), from Lebrija, has presented Pan de limón con semillas de amapola, together with the stars of this film, Elia Galera and Eva Martín.
Santi Amodeo: ‘I’ve been like a vampire with the main characters’.
With Las Gentiles, Santi Amodeo reflects on adolescent existence and the impact that young people suffer in their lives due to social networks, which can lead them to frustration and even suicide in its most romantic approach.
Amodeo explained some of the key elements of the story: ‘I wanted the social networks to form the backbone of the film, which does not have a classic structure. When the actresses came on board, the project continued growing, because they already live this reality in an integrated way. The film fed itself, even with elements taken from the protagonists' own social networks. I have been like a vampire. They have helped me to understand the philosophy of social networks, how young people feel them and how they communicate through them’.
With a cast of new faces like África de la Cruz and Paula Díaz (both present at the press conference), Las Gentiles also focuses on something that has become very relevant after the pandemic: the mental health of young people. ‘I wanted to address the subject with a lot of respect and care. I didn't want there to be a moral, and I didn't want to be particularly pedagogical on this subject, but it's obvious that mental health is something very worrying in the context we live in, and I think it's very necessary to put the spotlight on. We mustn't forget that suicides are the main cause of death among teenagers, and if the film helps in any way, I'm delighted’, said Santi Amodeo.
Benito Zambrano: ‘I really love women’s stories, very Lorca influenced’
In Pan de limón con semillas de amapola, the filmmaker from Lebrija adapts the novel of the same name by Cristina Campos to take the viewer to the Majorcan town of Valldemosa. This is the setting for a story of reencounters, which follows two sisters separated by life's circumstances who cross paths to manage the bakery they inherited. Zambrano says: "I love women's stories and female characters. I am very Lorca influenced. I come from a large family with four sisters and my mother. I think our world is very Marian, very female, and I'm very interested in it’.
As he did in Solas and La voz dormida, Benito Zambrano once again shows his sensitivity in drawing female portraits. In this case, he creates the right atmosphere for the characters of Elia Galera and Eva Martín to redefine their relationship and heal old wounds. ‘In the novel I found stories that resound, that hit you, with which you feel you can create a bond. It is like adopting a son or a daughter: after the first process you feel as if you have given birth to them. Subjects like the aid workers who give their lives to help others in very dangerous places, who are real heroes. Or motherhood, the world of the family... There is a lot in the novel that connects with me’.
The main characters of the film have shared their experience: ‘Anna's character starts in one place and ends up in a very different one. She is a woman who could be two different women’, explained Eva Martín (seen in series such as Valeria or Merlí: Sapere Aude). ‘She starts out with a very fake life, very much for show. She is self-conscious and submissive to her marriage. Later, Anna wakes up, empowers herself and makes the decisions she has to make’.
For her part, Elia Galera said, ‘Marina doesn't have much to do with me. A little more from a professional point of view, in terms of how to rebel against what is expected of you. I do identify with that, as do many women who have to reconcile work and family life. In the film, the two sisters build each other up, they advance at the same time, and they are supported by a network of other women. That is something very feminine, that empathetic support from women, from sisterhood’.
Violeta Salama said, ‘I wanted to talk about multiculturalism in a natural way, without it being something controversial’.
Violeta Salama, born in Granada, talked about her luminous debut film, Alegría, in which she captures some of her own experiences, focusing on the coexistence between Jews, Catholics and Muslims in Melilla, the city where she lived for a long time. Daughter of a Sephardic father and a Catholic mother, Salama is committed to multiculturalism in her film. `We are all part of a real multiculturalism. I have lived with it, I have had to define myself at many times, as a Jew, as a European... That is richness, and I wanted to tell it in a natural way, without it being something controversial or exceptional’.
The director has admitted that her film can be understood differently by male and female audiences. ‘From the script I could already see different reactions depending on gender, but also on whether they had children or not, whether they had experienced any identity problems or not... There are several subjects and each viewer is left with one or the other’.
Regarding the choice of such a complete and diverse cast of actresses, Viola Salama confessed that, ‘I had a crush on them. They coincided with what I had in my head, and I adapted the script to each of them’. About Cecilia Suárez, the star question in México was how she had come to star in Alegría. Salama answered, ‘She had moved to Madrid. All the projects had stopped because of the pandemic. She received the script and contacted me interested. In any case, there are a lot of accents in the film and, at the end of the day, it's part of the subject matter. It's very natural’. The director also reflected on the films that inspired her to make her debut behind the camera. ‘I handled many different ones. But there are two films that I used with the crew and that, in a way, encompassed the message I wanted to convey: Caramel, by Nadine Labaki, and Monsoon Wedding, by Mira Nair. The first one in particular is a tribute to Beirut, it was similar to what I wanted to do with Melilla’.
