Rodrigo Cortés gives the world premiere of his magnificent Love Gets A Room, a film about a troupe of actors in the hell of the Warsaw ghetto.
Czech director Václav Kadrnka closes his trilogy about absence with the austere and healing Saving One Who Was Dead, which will compete for the Golden Giraldillo award.
García-Pelayo presents the first two titles of his project 7 Films in 1 Year, Ainur and Dejen de prohibir que no alcanzo a desobedecer todo
Seville, 11th November.- On its seventh day, the Seville Festival has been the setting chosen for the world premiere of the new feature film by Rodrigo Cortés, Love Gets A Room. It is perhaps the most complex project addressed by the Galician filmmaker, a man who is used to challenges: from his short films, in his debut with Concursante (2007), in Luces rojas (2012) or Blackwood (2018), and mainly in the successful Buried (2010), filmed inside a coffin from which Ryan Reynolds tries to escape.
In Love Gets a Room, Cortés travels back to 1942 and proposes an immersive experience with a 14-minute sequence shot that puts the viewer right into the Warsaw ghetto. In this way, the camera follows the main characters's treacherous path to a small theatre in the heart of the ghetto, dodging Nazi soldiers' checkpoints and corpses on street corners. Inside, a troupe of actors is preparing to perform a vaudeville musical.
Cortés's camera follows the characters on stage and backstage, showing the contrast between the show must go on and the intimate drama in the face of the horror of Nazi rule, or, in other words, the power of art in the face of fear and despair.
Rodrigo Cortés, accompanied at the press conference by the German writer and screenwriter David Safier, talked about the surprising aspect of this story based on real events. ‘Very little is known about the cultural life that existed in the ghetto because we tend to apply the imagery of a concentration camp to it. I was fascinated. I was fascinated that the play represented in the film was a huge success in the ghetto in 1942. In this sense, the filmmaker has clarified where the heart of the film lies. ‘It is the story of a group of actors who do what they must do. Something very typical of the world of theatre. If your father dies, you must go on stage; the lights go out and you light candles. Your duty is to do the show no matter what.’
According to the filmmaker and writer (he has recently published the book Los años extraordinarios), Love Gets A Room has a formal mechanism that works like clockwork and on which he has continued reflecting. ‘It seemed complex to me to organise in real time a story without cuts or ellipses that forces us to constantly enter and leave a play. That constant contrast between the tension off stage and the songs and laughter on stage.’ In this sense, Cortés has explained his work when directing the actors. ‘They went crazy. There is an easy part to understand: the off-stage and on-stage. On the one hand, the exuberance, the one-act farce, the bright and funny; and on the other hand, the harshness of what happens on the outside. But in the play itself the point of view changes, and there comes a moment when the text of the play and what the characters experience outside the play come closer together, until they merge.’
For his part, David Safier, scriptwriter of this film and novelist of titles like Bad Karma or Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark, has explained that the origin of this script is an investigation about ‘the only play that was written during the holocaust and that had survived.’ To Safier, ‘this is a love story that shows what humans can potentially do when facing adversity. The actors have to do the play because that's what they must do, that's their obligation. These are the stories that interest me.’
Václav Kadrnka: “This is a very personal film’
The Czech filmmaker Václav Kadrnka returns to Seville four years after presenting here Little Crusader (2017), winner of the Crystal Globe Award at Karlovy Vary. This was the second of the films that the director included in his trilogy about absence, along with Eighty Letters (2011) and Saving One Who Was Dead, which forms part of the Official Section of this year's Festival.
The filmmaker's austere new proposal, which is competing for the Golden Giraldillo award, shows us the harshness and uncertainty of a sick person in a vegetative state. After a stroke, the father of the family is in a coma, cared for by his wife and son. The long days in hospital, the silences and all that is suffered and thought but not said are part of a deeply spiritual film. A story that tells us of that time shared when verbal communication is not possible with the sick person but, nevertheless, one feels the certainty that connection is possible. Without leaving the clinic, Václav Kadrnka immerses us in the spiritual journey of the main characters as they accompany their father in this transition between life and death.
‘It's a very personal film about my family memories and the letters my mother wrote to my father. I noticed that there were connections in the structure to my previous film, Little Crusader. During its production, my father suffered a very serious stroke,’ he confessed. ‘Whoever watches my film will feel strong emotions, and many people don't like that. It's difficult to analyse because this is not a story that can be cut into small pieces. It's a ritual. That's the concept I wanted to convey, because if you are part of a ritual you feel at home.’
Václav Kadrnka also talked about the location used in this production. ‘We found an old, disused hospital. I wanted to create a claustrophobic space where there is no outside, only what we see through the window. It is a metaphor of existence because we are all trapped in our bodies.’
Gonzalo García-Pelayo: ‘We know how to make films quickly and cheaply, not necessarily good’
Finally, the last call of the day has been led by the unclassifiable project of the filmmaker, producer and gambler Gonzalo García Pelayo, entitled 7 Films in 1 Year, which consists, as its name implies, on the shooting of seven films in a single year, between April 2021 and April 2022. All of them with a shared topic: the joy of living.
García-Pelayo, a referent in Spanish underground cinema, and owner of such an unusual style as his projects, presented the special sessions, in the world premiere, of the first two titles in the project: Dejen de prohibir que no alcanzo a desobedecer todo and Ainur.
In addition to Gonzalo García-Pelayo, the press conference was attended by his brother Javier, main character of Dejen de prohibir..., the producer Gervasio Iglesias, the production director Pilar Campano and the actresses Danel Bersebayeva (main character of Ainur) and Olivia Cábez (protagonist of both films).
Gonzalo García Pelayo, explained the origin of the project. ‘At the end of the pandemic and of a phase of my life, I decided to go ahead with all the ideas I had, with the desire to travel and get to know various locations… I was encouraged and reached an agreement with my brother, Pilar and Gervasio. We know how to make films quickly and cheaply, not necessarily good, but quick. Instead of making one medium-cost film, the idea was to make seven, to which we added another one, which we have already financed. I prefer quantity more than quality, but I think some of them will be average good. So far we've finished four feature films, and we have half of them left. I wanted to make one film per month, and travel to shoot in countries I didn't know, like Argentina or India.’
Gervasio Iglesias, producer of films such as La isla mínima and García-Pelayo's collaborator in this adventure, explained how the project was boosted: ‘I've been friends with Gonzalo for years. He proposed it to me at a time when I felt very tired of the usual film narratives, and I wanted to bet on new ways of narrating.
I thought it was the moment when, at the first meeting, Gonzalo told me that he had seven films in his head, and I thought it was marvellous. What motivated me the most was the desire to experiment with the form, because his cinema is closer to essay or poetry.’
Some of the keys to understanding who Gonzalo García-Pelayo is and what he does were given by his brother Javier. ‘He is a very coherent person, increasingly free, and acts more according to his tastes and needs, which is what an artist has to do.’
Olivia Cábez, who acts in these first two films, defended the singularity of García Pelayo as an essential figure in experimental cinema: ‘The approach to Gonzalo's films has to be very open. The film industry imposes a lot. There are very rigid patterns about what is cinema and what is not, but in Gonzalo's case it is different. In Gonzalo's cinema you have to be prepared for everything.’
