Just a year ago Carlota Pereda released Piglet, her acclaimed feature debut, a thriller with clear references to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre about an overweight teenager who suffers bullying. The film won the Méliès de Oro award at the Sitges Festival and now the Madrid director returns to the fantasy film competition with a supernatural drama, The Hermitage, premiering in theaters on November 17. The film stars Belén Rueda in the role of a down-and-out medium who is asked by Emma, ??a girl whose mother has a terminal illness, to help her contact the spirit of a girl who died in a hermitage in the 17th century. during the Spanish plague.
It is a very different film from Piggy. Was that precisely what attracted you to the project?
Yes, it came to me during the pandemic when Laura Fernández, from Filmax, started watching my short films and wanted to work with me. We started talking and she sent me this script, which was about a man who lived in Edinburgh and was a medium. It is based a little on a story that happened at Edinburgh College in which it was said that voices were heard and a Japanese medium said that she was a girl who cried because she missed her doll and that’s why people left toys. Laura decided to develop it with Carmelo Viera and Albert Bertran and when the story came to me she contacted me in a very brutal, very emotional way and I said that I would do it but if we focused on certain elements that were not so developed and if we brought the film to Spain. We change the character of the real medium for a fake medium. Laura and the writers loved the idea and we started working on it. I already had the film before Piglet and I just started shooting it a week after it premiered in Sitges.
There is a lot of Basque legend and mythology in the film
We created the legend of the birdmen and I also based it on the legend of the Olite hermitage and the Pamplona running of the bulls. Navarra suffered greatly from the plague on the Peninsula. And I also wanted to explore topics that interested me such as the construction of the story, how beliefs in the fantastic help us live, and the mother-child relationship. Just during the pandemic I thought that if I died, what was going to happen to my daughter. I had no one to leave her with. At the same time, as a child I experienced the same absence that Emma experiences and that is why this script offered me the opportunity to talk about a very personal thing without having to tell my story. In the end we tried to make the film as much mine as possible because you need passion to carry out projects. And I felt that concrete connection with a project that came from outside.
This time Laura Galán, the protagonist of Cerdita, has had to settle for a cameo in the role of the daughter who distrusts the medium played by Belén Rueda
I want Laura to be in everything I do! (laughs). But I was very clear that the medium had to be Belén. And Maia Zaitegi, who plays Emma, ??is a discovery. She wanted her to be a Basque girl and the casting process was very complex to find someone who had the magic to be able to support the weight of the film. She was wonderful and she had so much truth, so empathetic, that I think she is the best tiny method actress.
How did you approach the most terrifying sequences with her?
We danced ‘Desphá’ by Rosalía. We had some videos with the monsters dancing, so we managed to reduce the tension and create a game atmosphere.
The hermitage is about that dilemma between believing or not in something that escapes our perception of rationality.
And believe in the legend, in life itself and people. There is a moment in which the characters begin to listen to each other and… there is one thing that happens when you get older and that is that you begin to understand your parents. And there are times when it’s late.
To what extent do you believe in the paranormal?
I am an agnostic who would like to believe. I tend more towards skepticism but I would love to believe. That’s why I like fantasy, genre, because that exists there and it can happen. There is nothing I would like more in the world than being able to communicate with my loved ones. I have experienced things that have no explanation but I have always found a rational explanation. All genres in the end are a drama at heart.
What is your biggest fear?
Something happening to my daughter and global warming.
After the success of Cerdita, do you feel nervous before the premiere of La ermita?
It’s something I can’t and don’t want to think about. I have to do what I want and hopefully people will accompany me. And as long as I have producers like Merry Colomer on my side I will be very happy. I’m not going to think about what career I want to do, I want to think about what stories I want to tell and those stories will come to me or emerge from me.
Why is there such a shortage of female directors who dedicate themselves to fantasy?
There are several factors. On the one hand, there are no references. There is me, Mar Targarona, Josefina Molina many years ago… there are many people in the short films, but there are also many women who are not interested in fantasy. And even if you like it, it’s very difficult to make a movie. They told me why I wanted to do gender when men already did it. It is easier to produce an intimate film. And, furthermore, when it comes to trying to make a career, the genre is more risky. The possibility of it going wrong is much greater, the possibility of ridicule is always present. If you want to have a career it is easier to demonstrate your weapons and your talent in something that is safer. And then there is the way of financing in Spain. Genre films are more difficult to finance and are less viewed, which does not happen in the United States. I have many colleagues who have a great career in film and have not directed genre, but they would like to do so and they have not been given the opportunity.
So what would you say to a young woman who dreams of being a film director?
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, which is something that happens a lot to all women. It’s just that we want to do everything perfect and it’s okay to do it wrong. Mistakes are beautiful and you learn from them. If people don’t like something, they will forget about it.
What is your next project going to be?
It will be very different. I have one that is fantastic and one that is not, but it is still so bizarre that it could be (laughs).
