Isabel Coixet, David Trueba, Elena Martín and Agustí Villaronga. Four names that represent very different points of view and a creative freedom that has led them to be reference creators in our country. With a very present absence of the long-awaited Mallorcan filmmaker, who died a year ago, we spoke with this year’s nominees for Best Director and listened to his reflections on the craft of making films, and writing them; about the importance of the awards and the high level of Catalan cinema in recent years.
What an excellent cinematographic harvest, that of 2023! This year’s Gaudí Awards once again value the diversity of powerful voices in our cinema, and, in the Best Direction category, brings together four renowned names that demonstrate this richness of perspectives. With Creatura, Elena Martín makes a brave approach to sexual awakening, feminine desire and women’s relationship with her body. In Un amor, Isabel Coixet adapts the novel of the same name by Sara Mesa to also reflect on intimacy, sex and small everyday sexist aggressions. In They know that, David Trueba uses the portrait of the brilliant Eugenio to talk about the hidden side of fame and to explain a love story larger than life itself. And with Loli Tormenta, his posthumous film, the much missed Agustí Villaronga offers a luminous comedy about the conflicts of the elderly.
To begin, we collect a few words about the legacy of the great absentee in this conversation: “He was a loving and delicate person. He always friendly. It was nice to meet him. In a world of sometimes ridiculous ambitions, Agustí was calm and generous. His cinema was also, and to that he added a point of internal tension, almost perverse, that made it very interesting,” notes David Trueba. Elena Martín, for her part, puts on the interpreter’s dress: “I didn’t have the pleasure of working with him, but I did have the pleasure of watching his films and I think he was a reference. Different at every moment, with a diverse and also ambitious career that crossed barriers. I have good friends who worked as actors and they remember it with such appreciation and it was so important to them that, as an actress, I envy it and it saddens me not to have been able to see how I worked with my own eyes.”
It is time to evaluate his role in the Gaudís. His proposals are among this year’s big favorites: Creatura has fifteen nominations, Saben aquel has thirteen and Un amor has eight. “That Creatura is the most nominated film excites me so much!” confesses Elena Martín. “We have had to trust, to fight… An ambitious proposal, medium in size and with risky content that we always wanted to address without shame. And, also, in Catalan. Therefore, receiving such overwhelming support motivates us to continue and rewards us all the way up to this point, encourages us and gives us validation that I receive with great joy. And award ceremonies, whether you win or not, serve to give visibility and to celebrate. And we will do that!” “This year there are very strong competitors and it is amazing to be nominated,” says Isabel Coixet. And David Trueba values ??feeling part of Catalan cinema: “I take the Gaudí nomination as a gift and as a gesture of generosity that makes me feel loved and accepted by this community.”
With a record number of nominations in the history of the Gaudís, with 70 titles of Catalan production, this year’s awards reflect a particularly interesting and plural moment in cinema made in Catalonia. All three have a positive opinion on the matter: “Right now, and in recent years, Catalan cinema has triumphed in the rest of the state, in Europe and in the world, it is very clear. The presence of very different films, of tones, themes, points of view, is what gives it richness. We would like there to be even more audiences who went to see them, but we cannot forget the world where we live, and we know that the cinema figures are what they are. Taking into account the context, we can be very happy,” reflects Coixet.
For his part, Martín explains that “voting for the Gaudís has made me remember films I have already seen, and you realize that there are many that you have taken home, that you have thought about, that have moved you… That is not easy at all. and it is happening. Contrary to those who want to simplify cinema and label it as Catalan cinema or as cinema made by women as if they were genres in themselves, it is shown that the voices are diverse and so are the codes. We are on the right track, because I feel there is a lot of risk. But we still have room to go.” In the same sense, Trueba believes: “On the one hand, the difficulties of attracting a mature and critical audience to theaters are confirmed, but also the wisdom of considering cinema a strategic sector. Catalan cinema is very well positioned because it is plural and creative values ??prevail.”
We end this three-way talk by asking the candidates for Best Director about the job of filming, working with actors and, also, writing films, because all three are nominated in the screenplay categories. Isabel Coixet is forceful: “It is my life. I’m only happy, or at least I’m happier, when I’m behind a camera on a film set. And that also has its B side, those moments in which you are not filming… Life is very flat, and that leads you to make more films, to write more, because I have always collaborated on the scripts of my films. , even though it doesn’t appear in the credits. It’s not that I have to do it no matter what, but I like it, and I think it’s a tool that helps me direct.”
Coixet also explains to us that the set is never a space of suffering for its actors, no matter how intense the story it tells in images, and Un amor is a good example: “The only anguish is the time you have to shoot. Nothing else. And I like filming to be fun spaces, make jokes, you don’t have to get dramatic and force the actors to suffer. “The shoots don’t have to be intense, I have no interest in torturing my actors and my crew.”
In this sense, and speaking of actors who suffer, or not, Elena Martín, who has directed herself in the two films she has signed, affirms that combining the two tasks is usually a rather logistical conflict, as happened in Júlia ist because, she affirms, hers “was not a particularly difficult character.” But things changed in the case of Creatura, with the game it proposes: three actresses for the same character in three moments of life, herself and two very young people, a girl and a teenager: “The key is in the team of the that you surround yourself. The coaches, the intimacy coordinators… And as for my work in front of the camera, here my sequences were very complex and with many emotional changes. “It helped me a lot to have done Suc de Síndria with Irene Moray.”
David Trueba, for his part, finds a whole world in his craft: “For me, cinema is a form of writing with images, and I approach this preliminary work with the same dedication as when I write a novel, knowing that in this case there is no It will be complete until filming and editing are finished. And directing gives me, above all, the possibility of creating with the actors a fictional reality, suggestive and full of sensations, which is almost equivalent to a parallel world that we enjoy. While filming They Know That, in some scenes with David Verdaguer and Carolina Yuste I thought about how lucky I was to be the director, because I saw them and they were both perfect, and I was the first spectator.”
Martín closes the conversation with a reflection on his relationship with cinema: “I’m not too fetishist, I don’t romanticize cinema per se. For me, it is a tool to explain stories, generate worlds, think about things, set ideas and debates in motion… And it is as valid as any other. And I use audiovisual a lot because it has times and a vibration that resonates with my vital moment. Who knows what it will be like later! But yes, making films is magic, it makes me grow and be a better person. And the frustrations are usually related to economic instability or the patriarchal character that still stifles so much cinema everywhere and with which you have to live as a director, screenwriter and actress. If you get distracted, you may find yourself immersed in deep disappointment. I don’t think people are aware of how serious the consequences are of the sector being so male and white,” she concludes.
