When Orson Welles broadcast The War of the Worlds in October 1938, thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets in fear of the imminent end of civilization at the hands of the Martians. Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Philippe Noiret and Michel Piccoli met in La grande bouffe (Marco Ferreri, 1973) determined to die eating the most exquisite delicacies until they burst. Panic, gluttony, lust… the proximity of the sunset of the world seems to unleash the most primal instincts of the human being.
But not always. A radiant sun, a film directed by Mònica Cambra, Ariadna Fortuny, Claudia García de Dios, Lucía Herrera, Belén Puime and Mònica Tort, which premieres tonight at the D’A Film Festival, deals with the arrival of a meteorite that will destroy the land yes or yes within seven days. There is no way back. Mila, an 11-year-old girl, lives those last moments of life surrounded by her sister, Ingrid, a 17-year-old teenager, her mother and her grandfather in an isolated farmhouse in the Tarragona area.
The last days of the family pass naturally without fuss or tragic overtones. Mila (Laia Artigas) proposes to organize a party and invite the neighbors for when the meteorite arrives that will end everything. Ingrid (Nunu Sales) is in love with her. The grandfather (Jaume Villalta) seems a bit clueless and the mother (Núria Prims) suffers because she does not know how to act with the girls: is it worth scolding, teaching or setting limits to the daughters in the certainty that nothing matters anymore?
“We have portrayed the end of the world as we would experience it, because as the end approaches you ask yourself what is important for you and for us, are the relationships with the people we love,” says the quintet of young directors in an interview with The Vanguard. When the film starts, the characters have already fully assumed that there is nothing to do, “it is not a film about trying to survive, but about managing the end,” they add.
A management that is not easy for anyone, but much less for the protagonist, because she is only 11 years old “and at that age you cannot decide, you depend on the elders, and you cannot do things that do not correspond to you. There is a moment when “The older sister wants to share a bottle with Mila and they offer her alcohol and joints, but it’s not her time to do that kind of thing. Mila has to accept that there are things she won’t live through and that’s her tragedy.”
Resignation is part of the characters in Un sol radiant, but it is a word that the directors of the film do not know. They met at the University and decided to make a teaser as their final degree project, but the pandemic arrived and the project was put on hold. But Ariadna, Clàudia, Lucía and the two Mònicas did not throw in the towel and saw in this setback “a unique opportunity to do better”. So that teaser became a true feature film whose gestation has lasted four years.
“We contacted the production company, we looked for the team, the financing and the location, we did the casting…” Little by little things turned out well. A crowdfunding initiative brought them a little money to get started, then the Tarragona Provincial Council granted them a grant and after “knocking on all doors”, they won the D’A Film Lab Barcelona award, aimed at promoting new talents in Spanish cinema and endowed with 20,000 euros, which allowed them to “pay for post-production”.
Carla Simón, who was their teacher in a workshop during their degree, gave them contact with Laita Artigas, who had starred in Summer 1993, and as soon as they met her, the directors of Un sol radiant knew that she was their Mila. For the role of her mother they wanted Prims and when they offered it to her, the actress immediately said that she was. Sales was signed in an open casting and Villalta, who gives life to the grandfather, is a doctor friend of Ariadna who agreed to become an actor on the brink of retirement.
The initiative of these Audiovisual Communication students from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona has borne fruit. Her film has already won a Special Jury Mention in the First Test of the REC Festival. She now competes in the D’A where she aspires to awards from the public, the jury and the critics. In addition, the film will be released this year in commercial theaters. They are only between 24 and 25 years old, but the future in the world of cinema seems to smile on this quintet of directors who do not rule out working together again in the future.
