Jonás is a lonely and somewhat disturbed man who believes that he is an astronaut and that he is traveling in a spaceship. But he actually lives in a modest neighborhood of Madrid, on the Sixth B floor. Zaida, a young teenager who lives with her stepfather, is a neighbor on the same block. Jonás and Zaida become friends and that friendship will help them to evolve and solve some of the problems they are facing. Karra Elejalde gives life to Jonás in Kepler Sexto B, a film by Alejandro Suárez Lozano that hits Spanish screens this Friday. The veteran actor tells the ins and outs of filming and many other things in this interview with La Vanguardia during his visit to the recent Malaga Festival.
Kepler Sexto B starts out as a science fiction movie, but it’s actually a social drama…
The film has some social criticism, but it is not an allegation. What it does is address two stages of people’s lives: adolescence and old age, which are the two weakest stages. We don’t take care of teenagers and older ones can die without anyone knowing.
How is your character?
He is a man who can’t take it anymore and he goes crazy, it changes his chip. He had worked at the planetarium and always wanted to be an astronaut. In addition, he suffers from Diogenes syndrome and has made his world inside his apartment with the props of Isaac Asimov. He is a man who does not want to return to Earth until he fulfills his mission, to find Captain Petrus, and it is still a tribute to Don Quixote, the Little Prince and science fiction.
How was the shoot?
It was a harrowing process. All the team in a 60-square-meter apartment for 11 hours a day during the covid period. It turned out very hard.
One of the discoveries in the film is Daniela Pezzotti, the young woman who plays the teenage neighbor…
Yes. The protagonist meets that girl, who is another alien in his eyes. Pezzotti does a great job. He is very solvent. Throughout the film, the girl somehow becomes Jonas’s granddaughter. They are like two soul mates, two souls in need, who find each other and compensate each other.
In recent times it is fashionable to reward child actors. What do you think of these types of awards?
I do not see it well. Children are always very natural in the cinema. It would be necessary to reward the director, who is the one who takes advantage of them. Woe to the one who thinks that when they give him a prize he deserves it! We shouldn’t give prizes to children who aren’t actors yet, because that means laughing at professionals who have always worked. From the age of 17 you can see if there is talent, but before that you should not reward minors because the bar is set very high and then what?
Kepler Sexto B is a social drama. You have also done a lot of comedy. What do you prefer?
I have always moved from comedy to drama. It is very good to change minds, to go from Unamuno to La vida padre. There are actors who are in their comfort zone and don’t move, but that’s not for me. Comedy is perceived as a minor genre, but in reality it is much more difficult and the actor who is a good comedian is usually magnificent in drama, as Alfredo Landa demonstrated in Los santos inocentes (Mario Camus, 1984).
Comedy or drama, you tend to succeed in almost everything you do, how do you handle success?
Success is not easy to carry. Success is bittersweet. Fame prevents you from going out to a disco. With success you have no life. I would like to live in anonymity. Before Eight Basque surnames (Emilio MartÃnez-Lázaro, 2014) I had cobwebs in the fridge. Now, I am the best actor in the world. Neither one thing nor the other. I am very skeptical of these questions.
What are your next projects?
I’ll start shooting another movie shortly and I’m also planning to participate in two series, but I won’t say anything until I have signed the contracts.
How do you see the fashion of the series that are taking space from the cinema?
Thanks to the series, most of the actors are working, but it is true that they can cause damage to distributors and exhibitors. The cinema is made to go to the theaters, but these can become residual with the rise of the platforms. We will have to consider what we do with cinemas and how they will reinvent themselves.
You have been living in Catalonia for many years. Is happy?
I am delighted and I already speak Catalan, although sometimes it makes me a little embarrassed, because when I express myself in public I don’t feel so solvent. Sometimes I go to the Jordi Basté program, he asks me in Catalan and I answer him in Spanish.
