FRED Film Radio - English Channel

During the London Spanish Film Festival, Fred Film Radio spoke with Simón Casal, the mind behind the gripping and provocative political thriller “Artificial Justice“.

Casal gave us an insight into the extensive research he undertook to fully understand the current state and impact of artificial intelligence across different sectors, but particularly justice, to craft his near-future world and story.

He also shared how his feature sits within the broader genre of sci-fi, where our fears around the impact of technology on our lives have long been made manifest, from the likes of “Minority Report” to “Black Mirror“, plus other reference points that informed his movie’s look and feel, such as the noir-meets-sci-fi sensibility of “Blade Runner“.

In the same way the movie opens with a referendum on whether AI should be allowed to replace judges in the judicial system, Casal too wants to ask his audience which way they would vote given the chance, and if some aspects of the law should stay in the hands of humans, so that decisions can be made with empathy and humanity.

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Fred Film Radio heard from director Patricia Font about her movie “The Teacher Who Promised the Sea” (“El maestro que prometió el mar”), adapted from a book by Francesc Escribano, presented on the penultimate night of the 2024 London Spanish Film Festival.

Patricia Font explained that although there are many films dealing with the Spanish Civil War, few delve into the ongoing search of many families for the remains of their loved ones who disappeared during this time.

A beautifully made and moving feature, Font shared how she juxtaposed and contrasted a fictional present with a reconstruction of the past, with a protagonist in the current day, Ariadna, searching for her great-grandfather who went missing during the War (played by the ever-excellent Laia Costa), providing a conduit to the historical era. While contemporary scenes are overshadowed by the weight of intergenerational wounds, trauma and death, the past is filled with colour, dynamism and life, the charisma of the titular teacher emanating from Enric Auquer off the screen.

Patricia Font talked through the way the few but shocking moments of violence are depicted, keeping the brutality of torture itself as implied rather than detailed, and the decision to end on a realistic yet poignant ending, letting the poetic words of one teacher’s students hang in the air.

Patricia Font  emphasised the importance of unearthing lost stories such as that of Antoni Benaiges as a way of keeping their memory alive and to help heal the wounds that remain in families and Spanish society more broadly as result of the horrors of history.

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Ruben Ostlund received the Stella Della Mole award at the National Cinema Museum in Turin and took for the first time outside Scandinavia, the installation The Square that inspired and preceded the making of the winning film at Cannes. Angelo Acerbi met up with him to talk about this, sociology, the grotesque and the taste for knowing how to laugh at oneself. And also what his net film will be about.

Art serves to change thoughts and subtleties, it can be done

Sociology is an interest and a cue for his films

For Ostlund, sociological curiosity is a necessity and an ongoing cue for his films. He tells us how he uses it and also where the inspiration for his next film comes from: a sociological experiment that he will adapt for the screen. Hear how.

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