I'm kind of a very wild
and very instinctive person.
I felt like there was a film I wanted to tell.
I identify with a lot of the things that have happened to Nat,
but I also identify with a lot of novels
and a lot of things,
and I don't necessarily want to turn them into movies.
But here I did see something I wanted to tell.
Well, just recently, because of nostalgia,
I was reviewing Whatsapp messages
and on November 13, 2020
Isabel told me "read 'Un Amor', I'm going to make the film,
I'd like you to join me, and I'm thinking of buying the rights now.”
And look, three years later, that's the strength that this woman has,
which is a force of nature.
She did it and we can share it tomorrow.
And I really want to see her with the audience.
In addition, there is one thing that I really like,
that is Isabel's first time in the Official Section,
and it's my first time at the festival as well.
I had never come before.
So I think we're enjoying it in a special way.
I don't think the film talks about a rural environment,
I don't think it talks about a small place.
It uses a small place to talk about
the continuous micro-aggressions
that we suffer in car parks, on buses,
when you go to a bank to have something clarified.
When you arrive at a hotel and they ask
“Are you coming alone" or "are you going to live here alone”,
or “were you scared last night?”
Wait, how's that, was I supposed to be scared?
All those things are the imposition
of a series of behaviors towards you.
You experience them as a woman, and men,
for many reasons,
don't even realize that we experience them as aggressions.
We have the foreigner;
a foreigner who wants to integrate;
we have the character who doesn't give a shit about anything;
There is a continuous threat in the film
and there is a kind of duel at the end. It's true.
It's like 'The Searchers' but without the Indians or anything.
I remember saying to Isabel,
“Heavens! This is a challenge...”
because at the cinematographic level, the tone, the texture
is this whole world.
I think Isabel introduced certain narrative tools that helped me a lot
when it came to creating Nat as well.
which gave me a lot of tools
when it comes to playing with one of the great themes
that the novel also has for me,
which is that thing like the hierarchy of pain that hurts the most.
The map of the horrors of the world is clear to me.
And it's also clear to me that I won't be able to fix it.
But what I do know for sure
is that we can save the little crap of everyday life.
In the end, the film talks about
all these domestic aggressions against women,
from all these different male characters.
who, on a personal level, seemed like a brutal
and very interesting challenge to experience.
We are talking about male micro-aggressions here,
but, watch out, there is also the woman
who is rubbing you with her perfect life and her perfect children
and who is telling you all the time
that you don't live the way you should live. And women do that, too.
And it's also unbearable.
In the book, for example,
we constantly follow Nat through her inner thinking.
That's not in the film,
there's no voice-over that's explaining to you
what the main character is thinking.
You're with her, but she's not saying anything.
But the visual aspect has great power.
Perhaps it's easier to enter a character this way,
seeing it exactly and simply with the gestures and its emotions,
even if it's not talking about what is happening.
Because I have literally experienced this in my city,
I have not lived it in a town.
So, watch out,
I'm not talking about something someone told me,
no way, I have experienced it in my flesh and in my city.
It talks about feminine desire,
but I like to talk more about the contradictions of feminine desire,
which is what is easier to judge,
because there is a certain feminine desire
certain feminine desire that is accepted
and that we all seem to understand.
And so that's okay, that's right.
But female desire is a thousand times more complex.
Isabel and I were very confident
because in “Foodie Love” we already shot a lot of sex scenes
that also have a different nature,
they have nothing to do with this film.
But I already trusted her and she trusted me,
and we knew that we were safe in the hands of others, so to speak.
It was very interesting because Hovik
had never done sex scenes in his career.
It was the first time
and he did share a certain nervousness with us.
But Hovik, I think, he opened up a lot with us too
and saw that it was a safe space
where we could express what we needed
and work on the scene because they seem to me...
I think that Isabel shoots sex like no other.
There are three sexual moments of these two characters
that narratively explain in a very clear way the contradictions
and nooks and crannies, especially of Nat,
and they help us understand this emotional dependence
due to this relationship.
There is one basic thing that is the word “power”,
and this false concept,
which is a word that I hate, which is “empowerment”.
Let's see, you either have power or you don't.
In our society, power is money and women still don't have money.
I made this film in five weeks with a minimum budget.
I know that people will then go and say “but this is a lot of money”.
No, for this film it's not a lot of money.
That I should have fought to have more?
Well, I don't know, I didn't know how.
The day they allow us to make mistakes with money,
then maybe we will have reached equality.
For now, all the female filmmakers are just struggling,
except for two who make franchises, which are 'Wonder Woman'
and 'Barbie'. You do that and you have money.
But not all filmmakers, neither men nor women, want to do that.
And that's what I'm aspiring to,
to make mistakes with money.
For me, Sara Mesa's opinion, when she saw the film,
was decisive and for Isabel, too,
we both needed to know what she thought.
She knew the script, she came one day of shooting,
but she didn't know the development of how we made the film.
And then also the people who have read the novel
and who also have a film in their heads.
I think Sara was aware
that when Laura Ferrero and I adapted her novel,
we did it out of respect,
out of admiration, but we also had to make a film,
we couldn't just make a photocopy in images.
So, of course, we did it out of respect for the essence of the novel,
which I think is there and Sara liked it.
One of the greatest rewards that I personally received with
this project is that Sara said that watching the film
she found things that she hadn't seen in the book,
I think that already, for Sara,
who created this novel, Nat is Laia.
I think that many people will feel identified at many moments
and especially in the journey that the protagonist takes,
especially towards the end,
I think that a lot of people are going to celebrate
the journey of our heroine.
The film is my revenge on all the bastards
and motherfuckers who have made my life more difficult.
With Coixet I'd go wherever it takes.
71SSIFF | Kafea - Pedágio
08:45
71SSIFF | Kafea - Beyond the Fog
13:02
71SSIFF | Kafea - Grace
21:08
71SSIFF | Kafea - El juicio
02:46
71SSIFF | Kafea - Les rayons gamma
22:18
71SSIFF | Kafea - The New Boy
18:51
71SSIFF | Kafea - Los delincuentes
24:55
71SSIFF | Kafea - Los impactados
16:26
71SSIFF | Kafea - We Are the Hollow Men
13:25
71SSIFF | Kafea - Bauryna salu
18:28
71SSIFF | Kafea - Contadores
15:35
71SSIFF | Kafea - Single Light
17:24
71SSIFF | Kafea - Alemania
19:30
71SSIFF | Kafea - Camping du lac
15:16
71SSIFF | Kafea - Short Story
26:58
71SSIFF | Kafea - Aunque es de noche
21:22