Meise and Lapid come to the festival with Great Freedom and Ahed's Knee, both winners at the last Cannes Film Festival.
The Catalan Liliana Torres gives the world premiere in Seville of her magnificent What did we do wrong?
Seville, 6 November.- On its second day, the 18th Seville Festival welcomed three filmmakers from very different backgrounds, both competing for the Giraldillo de Oro award. On the one hand, the Austrian Sebastian Meise is presenting Great Freedom, with which he won the Jury Prize at Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2021. On the other hand, the Israeli Nadav Lapid, who is an old acquaintance of the festival, where he was awarded with his film The Kindergarten Teacher (2014) and Synonyms (2019). He arrives this year with Ahed's Knee, and the endorsement of the Jury Prize at Cannes. Finally, Liliana Torres (Family Tour), from Barcelona, is making her world premiere in Seville with What did we do wrong? All three have appeared at a press conference to talk about their films and their presence in Seville.
Sebastian Meise: ‘I knew that homosexuality had been illegal in Germany, but I thought that it was something remote in history’.
In Great Freedom, Sebastian Meise moves from a prison story to a romantic melodrama, to tell the story of the relationship between a homosexual (Franz Rogowski), a victim of the repression to which a law in Germany, the terrible article 175 (in force until relatively recently), punished his sexual orientation, and a convicted murderer (George Friedrich) whom he meets behind bars. A relationship, explained the Austrian filmmaker, ‘That is not necessary to define. What difference does it make whether it is love or friendship? What difference does it make whether one is gay or the other is straight? They are two people who share something very deep, there is no need to specify any more’.
A story inspired by real events that has its origin, according to the Austrian filmmaker, ‘In the reports we read about many cases of homosexual men who were sent to prison. I thought it was unbelievable, so we started researching that article that we didn't know about. I knew that homosexuality had been illegal in Germany, but I thought it was something remote in history. We interviewed people who had first-hand experience. That is how Hans, the main character, came to life.
Beyond the social and human aspect of the film, the elements that relate Great Freedom to a sub-genre that has made a fortune in the history of cinema are plentiful: the prison drama. Meise has confessed some of his references: "There is a film I saw as a child, Escape from Alcatraz, with Clint Eastwood, which has etched in my memory forever. But there were others that were in my head too, like Un chant d'amour, by Jean Genet; Kiss of the Spider Woman, by Hector Babenco; A Prophet, by Jacques Audiard... The more we worked on the script, the more we realised that the prison genre is the basis of the story, but that the love story also has a lot of weight, so we had to find a balance between the two genres. And in that sense, Brokeback Mountain, by Ang Lee was a great reference".
Nadav Lapid: ‘I wanted to show the feeling of living in an ill society”
Israeli director Nadav Lapid returns to Seville with a feature film that is a powerful, visceral denunciation of the artistic censorship in his country and, at the same time, a heartfelt tribute to his late mother, the editor of several of his films. Ahed's Knee plays with the mimics of autofiction to follow the adventures of a filmmaker who goes with his latest film under his arm to a village in the middle of the Arava desert. All under the watchful eye of a government civil servant.
The director of The Kindergarten Teacher has told how his new film is based on his own experience: ‘It is very autobiographical. In 2018, I received a call from a civil servant at the Ministry of Culture, just as I was working with my mother on the editing of Synonyms. I was going to a debate after a screening of another film of mine, and she mentioned, out of the blue, that I had to specify on a form what topics I was going to talk about in that colloquium, warning me that I couldn't touch on any other subject. It's not much different today, but back then that seemed to me to be the zenith of censorship in Israel. That was the genesis of Ahed's Knee. Unlike the film's protagonist, I did sign the form. Soon after, my mother died’.
Lapid confessed that this feature film turned into an obsession: ‘Three weeks after my mother’s death, I had finished the script and I was feeling possessed by this story, by the need to make this film. It is also autobiographical in the attempt to show that sensation of living in a sick society, where there is always a battle to fight. You are surrounded by dragons and enemies, and you also become one. You end up separating from your essence as a human being’.
The filmmaker has talked in the press conference about the receipt in his country of such a critical film: ‘Israel is a small place, and the state turns any success into support for its ideology. Winning a football match, Eurovision or having an Israeli film selected at Cannes becomes a propaganda element of the Israeli government's message, a source of pride. That is what happened with the film until they read my statements. That’s when I stopped being a hero, and turned into a traitor. I was threatened at first, but then when the film was released, I have to admit that I have never had such positive reactions. My phone was full of messages from strangers telling me that they had connected with the film.
Liliana Torres: "Women can put work at the centre of our lives and this has affected the way we live our love relationships".
Born in Barcelona, Liliana Torres has explained to the media in Seville the origin and the very personal process of creation of ¿Qué hicimos mal?, her second feature fiction film after Family Tour (2013). Although in both cases, the term fiction has all possible nuances. ‘When my scripts take shape I don't have a clear structure and I don't know what percentage is going to be fact or fiction. I discover it as the process evolves. In the filming part, there are many more things involved, and the factor of being in front of the camera is the one with the most risk’, which is the case in this film.
Unlike what happened in Family Tour, where the actress Núria Gago played a role based on her, in ¿Qué hicimos mal? it is Liliana Torres herself who plays herself, whereas Xúlio Abonjo and Adrián Ríos play the role of her ex-boyfriends. The film is about a fictional relationship crisis that leads her to launch a cathartic audiovisual project: she will track down and interview her three ex-boyfriends, the most important love relationships of her life. Her goal is to answer the eternal question after a break up: what did we do wrong? (the translation into English of the film’s title).
Torres has talked about the process in which reality and fiction are mixed: ‘There is a clear formation of the script, and there are also distinct parts that are built from fiction. In addition, the interviews with my ex-boyfriends are real and they fit together during the process. It was a game between what I was discovering in the interviews and what I was writing’. About their involvement in this film. Torres explained that, in her case, ‘There were ex-boyfriends with whom I had had more contact and I could sense what was going to happen, but during the interviews there were moments that altered the past. In a way, time gives you the courage to say what we didn’t say at that time, and gives you the chance to close cycles’.
Among other matters, ¿Qué hicimos mal? is a deep reflection on the role that the professional sphere now occupies in women’s life. In this respect, Torres stated that ‘Women can now put our profession at the center of our lives. This has acquired a new weight in love relationships. We no longer have to sacrifice things, and this conditions the direction that this relationship takes.’
This has acquired a new weight in relationships, we no longer have to sacrifice things, and this conditions the direction that that relationship takes".
