In competition at the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, “All of a Sudden” marks a new chapter in the work of Ryusuke Hamaguchi, continuing the director’s exploration of communication, intimacy and emotional ambiguity after “Drive My Car”.

The film follows Marie-Lou, director of a care facility for the elderly, as she attempts to introduce a philosophy of care grounded in dignity and attentive listening. Her encounter with Mari, a Japanese theatre director living with cancer, gradually transforms both women, creating a profound bond that transcends language, illness and cultural distance.

Hamaguchi reflected extensively on the construction of the film’s dialogue, which constantly shifts between everyday realism and philosophical inquiry.

“I believe that the body can carry a lot of information,” the director explained. “There are things that cannot be verbalised, but the body still knows them.”

The screenplay originates in a correspondence between philosopher Makiko Miyano and medical anthropologist Maho Isono, two figures whose discussions on coincidence, risk, and illness deeply moved the filmmaker.

According to Hamaguchi, the challenge was not simply adapting ideas into scenes, but translating an invisible emotional exchange into cinematic form.

“I couldn’t create the same feeling simply by taking fragments from the original material,” he said. “So I kept reading the texts over and over until they became part of my body.”

The director compared the process to preparing soup: ingredients slowly dissolve, lose their original shape, and eventually become something entirely different. Rather than constructing dialogue through rigid intellectual design, he allowed instinct and physical intuition to guide the writing.

That same physicality also shaped his approach to directing actors.

“The actor’s body and voice carry enormous information,” he noted. “If dialogue is going to affect the actor physically, then I need to write it physically too.”

One of the film’s most striking aspects is its fluid movement between Japanese and French, extending a multilingual experimentation already present in “Drive My Car”.

For Hamaguchi, multilingual performance creates a unique emotional condition for actors. When verbal understanding becomes partial or unstable, performers instinctively rely more intensely on gesture, rhythm and bodily attention.

“When actors cannot fully rely on language, they must become attentive to each other’s bodies,” he explained. “That creates reactions that feel very alive.”

The director also described the central relationship between the two women as “slightly miraculous” because each character can speak in her own mother tongue while still being understood emotionally.

This dynamic demanded extraordinary preparation from the cast. Actress Virginie Efira had only two months to study Japanese before shooting, while her co-star had to learn French dialogue with equal precision.

“It was an enormous task,” Hamaguchi admitted. “Watching them work reminded me once again how extraordinary actors are.”

The theatrical performance featured in the film was created specifically for “All of a Sudden” and does not exist independently of the screenplay. Its conceptual foundation emerged from Hamaguchi’s research into Franco Basaglia, the Italian psychiatrist whose work contributed to the dismantling of psychiatric institutions in Italy.

The director discovered Basaglia through Psychonautica, a book by the Japanese anthropologist Takeshi Matsushima that examines the history of Italian psychiatric care.

“I was shocked,” said Hamaguchi. “In Japan, abolishing psychiatric institutions feels almost impossible.”

The connection between Basaglia’s philosophy and the film’s themes became central. For the filmmaker, both the care philosophy known as Humanitude and Basaglia’s work revolve around restoring individuality to people reduced by institutions to diagnostic labels.

“Makiko Miyano resisted being defined only as a cancer patient,” he explained. “She wanted to reclaim all the other parts of herself.”

Asked whether the film proposes a form of contemporary humanism, Hamaguchi responded cautiously, admitting discomfort with the term itself. Yet his reflections revealed a deep concern about how modern societies reduce people to functions, categories and consumable identities.

Drawing again from Matsushima’s writings, the director spoke about “animism toward humans,” questioning whether contemporary society still treats people as beings with inner lives and spiritual complexity.

“There are things that cannot be seen or verbalised but still exist,” he said. “We are more than our labels.”

For Hamaguchi, today’s “attention economy” systematically fragments human connection by commodifying time and focus. Against that logic, the film quietly advocates sustained attention and recognition.

“Perhaps we can accumulate days where we truly treated someone like a full human being,” he concluded.

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Unica produzione interamente italiana selezionata al 79º Festival di Cannes, il cortometraggio “Oh Boys“ di Antonio Donato è in concorso alla Quinzaine des Cinéastes. Sviluppato all’interno del Premiere Film Lab, il film intreccia tre storie ambientate in un borgo costiero dove tutti cercano di distinguersi: tra assoli vistosi, feroci partite di ping pong e appuntamenti maldestri, un giovane sassofonista intraprende una strada diversa. Una dramedy di diciassette minuti che esplora con ironia e sensibilità le fragilità nascoste dietro la mascolinità performativa. Prodotto da Saverio Pesapane e Mariapia Autorino per Premiere Film, in associazione con Andromeda Film, Via73 e Courageous Donuts, il film vede nel cast Luca Lacerenza, Meg Bellamy, Tom Byrne e Antonio De Rosa.

“Oh Boys” nasce da un laboratorio: i fondi del PNRR destinati al borgo di Pisciotta per la sua valorizzazione culturale. Premiere Film è stata chiamata a produrre un film sul territorio, ha aperto un bando nazionale e ha selezionato Antonio Donato come regista. Non c’era ancora una storia, solo un luogo. Visitandolo con gli sceneggiatori, tre cose lo hanno colpito: il fatto che tutto il paese sapesse del film e cercasse di fare colpo sulla troupe; un misterioso sassofonista che si esercitava ogni pomeriggio al tramonto senza che nessuno sapesse chi fosse; e una banda di paese che accoglieva turisti francesi venuti a studiare l’italiano con una grande festa di strumenti. Da questi tre elementi, Antonio Donato ha costruito il film collegandoli alle sue tematiche autoriali: “Come noi uomini spesso indossiamo maschere di potere per sentirci dominanti, rilevanti, per nascondere le nostre fragilità e come queste poi portano a varie storture nella nostra società. Noi andiamo ad esplorare proprio le radici di questo tipo di modo di stare al mondo e svelare e rompere queste maschere”.

C’è una tenerezza particolare nel modo in cui “Oh Boys” guarda i suoi personaggi, e Antonio Donato sa da dove viene. A ventinove anni, lui e il co-sceneggiatore Paolo Luca Lorbone si trovano in una posizione di osservatori privilegiati: da un lato il retaggio imposto, dall’altro il tentativo di emanciparsene. Ma anche la loro generazione, ammette, continua inconsciamente a replicare gli stessi schemi. “I personaggi che raccontiamo sono molto vicini a noi, sono personaggi che conosciamo bene, che amiamo, sono le nostre famiglie, i nostri fratelli, i nostri amici. C’è tenerezza perché loro sono vittime di se stessi, sono vittime di un algoritmo che gli è stato imposto. Quella è un po’ la nostra idea di cinema: cercare di metterci in pace noi stessi con le nostre fragilità”.

Nel film c’è un personaggio che osserva tutto con uno sguardo apparentemente passivo, interpretato da Luca Lacerenza, che Antonio Donato definisce il suo attore preferito al mondo. Lo ha diretto già nel corto precedente e lo dirigerà nel suo primo lungometraggio. Quello che lo affascina è la sua capacità di esprimere un monologo interiore facendo pochissimo. “Lui rappresenta un po’ quello sguardo passivo che sembra arrendevole, ma poi invece non lo è. Ed è lì che nasce la contraddizione”. Quanto ai riferimenti cinematografici, Antonio Donato cita la comicità esistenzialista di Jacques Tati, il Nanni Moretti degli anni Novanta, lo stallo esistenziale di Roy Andersson, la verticalità giudicante di Ruben Östlund e, per il calore che mancava a quel quadro, il cinema di Miranda July.

Antonio Donato sta sviluppando il suo primo lungometraggio, adattamento di “Sparare alle angurie”, sostenuto dal Torino Film Lab Extended, dalla residenza ALCA – Chalet Mauriac e vincitore del Premio SIAE e del Cannes City Award. La storia segue una famiglia di soli uomini, un padre e due figli ventenni, in vacanza in Sardegna per la prima volta senza la madre, in un residence borghese dove il padre, ex pilota in pensione, fa il padrone. Ma la vacanza nasconde segreti: il padre si sta separando, un figlio sta perdendo i capelli, l’altro non si sente all’altezza. “Queste fragilità vengono messe sotto un coperchione, ribollono, finché iniziano a esplodere quando una nuova famiglia straniera si trasferisce di fianco a loro e loro sono nettamente più fighi, più ricchi, più belli, più eleganti”. Ne nasce una tragicomica competizione.

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Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “Elephants in the Fog” is the feature debut of Nepali writer-director Abinash Bikram Shah, and the first Nepali film ever selected for the section. Set in Thori, a forested village in Nepal’s southern Terai plains, the film follows Pirati, the matriarch of a Kinnar family, an ancient third-gender community both revered and feared whose dream of escaping with the man she loves is shattered when one of her daughters disappears during a nightly patrol against wild elephants. Pushpa Thing Lama stars in the lead role.

The film’s genesis lies in an unlikely place. During the Covid lockdowns, Abinash Bikram Shah was scrolling through TikTok when he came across videos of Kinnar women dancing, joking, performing with joy. The comments underneath were vile, filled with transphobia. But the women kept posting. That contradiction pulled him in. He visited the community repeatedly before writing a single line, drawn to the dynamics of a family that is not biological but no less real. “They are mostly outcast from society, from the family, and they found a new family to live in just to survive, just to belong somewhere. And the family that they live in, it’s so similar to what you call a “normal” family. It’s so dysfunctional for sure, but at the same time, there’s so much love, warmth, and everything”.

What Abinash Bikram Shah wanted to test was a question that traditional family dramas rarely ask: what happens when someone disappears from a chosen family? The pain is the same, but the world’s response is not. “We have all seen films about biological families where someone goes missing and how desperately they search. Here, the challenge is that they are not a biological family. But what if one goes missing? The pain and strength of Pirati as a mother, regardless of the origin of the relationship, is the motor and the centre of the movie”.

Casting Pushpa Thing Lama as Pirati was instinctive. Abinash Bikram Shah describes seeing her for the first time as love at first sight. But the path to the performance was long and difficult. Heavily influenced by Bollywood, Pushpa Thing Lama‘s initial work in front of the camera was far from the naturalism the film demanded. Workshops and acting lessons didn’t help. What eventually unlocked the performance was something simpler: closeness. “Slowly, I became closer to her, and we built a trust factor. It was a very long process because Pirati is such a complex character. It took a lot of time, but it was worth it”.

The title carries layers of meaning that Abinash Bikram Shah traces back to a story told to him by a mother in the community: the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each one touches a different part of the animal and mistakes it for something else entirely. “She said that in Nepal, people see them with that same limited perspective. They see them as Kinnar women with powers or as sex workers, but they don’t see them as whole human beings”. Abinash Bikram Shah then discovered that elephants are matriarchal animals, which deepened the parallel with Pirati’s family. There is also the contradiction at the heart of Hindu culture: worshipping the elephant-headed god while scaring real elephants away. “My job as a director and writer is to bring that elephant out of the fog. We want their blessing, but we don’t want them around. This analogy flows so well with the story”.

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Presented at the Quinzaine des Cinéastes during the 79th Festival de Cannes, “Free Eliza (Notes On An Anatomical Imperfection)” is the debut feature by Greek filmmaker Alexandra Matheou, a sharp and emotionally layered exploration of identity, performance and emotional repression.

The film follows Eliza, a hotel employee unable to smile physically, despite working in an environment where constant cheerfulness is expected. For Alexandra Matheou, the idea emerged from a real encounter with a hotel worker whose expression stayed with her long after their meeting. “She had the saddest face in the world,” the director recalled. “I remember writing a quick note on my phone after seeing her name tag: Eliza.”

That brief encounter became the foundation for a wider reflection on hospitality spaces as artificial environments where workers are expected to leave their personal struggles behind to perform emotional availability for guests.

According to Alexandra Matheou, hotels operate as microcosms of contemporary society, places where appearance matters more than emotional truth. The director draws a direct connection between this environment and the performative culture encouraged by social media.

“Everything online becomes a polished version of yourself,” she said. “None of the bad things make it there.”

Although “Free Eliza” critiques systems that demand constant positivity, the film deliberately avoids bitterness or cynicism. Alexandra Matheou, who describes herself as naturally optimistic, sees optimism itself as a form of resistance in the current social climate.

“The world makes it very hard to be optimistic,” she explained. “Settling for cynicism is easier.”

For the filmmaker, cynicism disconnects people from tenderness and empathy, while optimism allows space for human connection even during difficult times. The film, therefore, embraces sadness not as weakness, but as an essential part of emotional life.

“Sadness shouldn’t be hidden,” she said. “It should be embraced and processed because that’s part of the human condition.”

This balance between melancholy and warmth gives the film its particular tone, combining emotional vulnerability with moments of humour and quiet absurdity.

One of the most striking aspects of Free Eliza is the way its protagonist refuses victimhood. Despite existing within a system constantly judging her appearance and emotional behaviour, Eliza maintains a strong sense of inner freedom.

Alexandra Matheou explained that many of her female characters share this quality. They are often outsiders within their environments, yet they never surrender their individuality in order to fit social expectations.

“I’m done watching women as victims on screen,” the director stated. “I want a greater range of female characters.”

For her, Eliza’s resistance lies precisely in her refusal to perform emotional agreeability. The film challenges cultural expectations surrounding femininity, particularly the pressure imposed on women to appear pleasant, accommodating and emotionally accessible at all times.

“The label of a ‘difficult woman’ is something I detest,” Alexandra Matheou said. “Women are constantly taught to act agreeably.”

The director also connected these ideas to her own personal experiences, acknowledging how often women are encouraged to suppress discomfort or disagreement in order to avoid judgment.

Despite addressing loneliness, social pressure and emotional alienation, Free Eliza remains unexpectedly funny. Humour, according to Alexandra Matheou, is essential to her way of observing human behaviour.

“Even in dramatic scenes, I like to infuse humour,” she said. “Sometimes life is tragic and ridiculous at the same time.”

The film’s voiceover became a key tool in balancing these emotional tones, allowing the audience access to Eliza’s intelligence, irony and emotional richness. Through humour, the character resists becoming defined by external perceptions.

By the film’s conclusion, Free Eliza gradually dismantles the audience’s assumptions about its protagonist. What initially appears as sadness or deficiency becomes something entirely different: freedom from the obligation to perform.

“There’s nothing to fix here,” Alexandra Matheou said. “Only something to embrace.”

Asked whether authenticity has become a radical act in a world built around performance, the director answered without hesitation.

“Absolutely,” she replied. “The world tells you to be yourself, but only if that self fits what society considers acceptable.”

For Alexandra Matheou, the challenge today is preserving a connection to one’s inner voice amid the noise of social expectations, digital performance, and cultural pressure. In Free Eliza, that resistance becomes both political and deeply human.

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Presented in the Cannes Première section of the 79th edition of the Festival de Cannes, “Kokurojo – The Samurai and the Prisoner” marks the first classical samurai film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Known internationally for works that span horror, thriller, and psychological drama, the Japanese filmmaker approached the jidaigeki genre through the figure of Araki Murashige, a 16th-century samurai remembered in Japanese history as a coward and traitor.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa explained that the project began when a producer gave him the novel that later became the basis for the film. What fascinated him was not Araki Murashige‘s historical reputation but the possibility of understanding the reasons behind his actions.

“He is known as the samurai who abandoned his people and escaped alone,” the director said. “But in this story, I could finally see why he may have done that.”

For Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the character’s refusal to obey the rigid values surrounding him creates a direct connection with contemporary society. Rather than portraying Araki Murashige as merely weak or dishonourable, the filmmaker sees him as someone attempting to free himself from systems that imprison individuals psychologically and morally.

Although Araki Murashige can easily be described as an anti-hero, Kiyoshi Kurosawa resists that definition. The director acknowledged that the character appears unconventional within the samurai tradition, yet he believes the essence of heroism lies precisely in choosing one’s own path despite social judgment.

“Even if people call him an anti-hero, he follows the path he believes in,” he explained. “To me, somebody like that is a true hero.”

This perspective shapes the emotional core of “Kokurojo – The Samurai and the Prisoner”. Rather than celebrating military glory or codes of honour, the film examines personal freedom, fear and moral ambiguity. The historical setting becomes a way to question modern structures of conformity and obedience.

The film also incorporates elements of mystery, betrayal, and growing suspicion among political figures. Asked about the role of paranoia in systems of power, Kiyoshi Kurosawa offered a reflection that extends beyond the film’s historical setting.

According to the director, power itself generates fear. The more authority individuals accumulate, the more terrified they become of losing it. That fear ultimately creates isolation and paranoia.

“The more power you have, the more fear increases,” he said. “People begin imagining terrible things that might happen if they let go.”

Without naming contemporary political figures, Kiyoshi Kurosawa suggested that modern leaders could learn something from Murashige’s decision to escape the structures surrounding him.

“I would be happy if even one person with power could let go and walk away,” he remarked. “That would require real courage.”

Despite a career spanning several decades and genres, Kiyoshi Kurosawa continues to seek new cinematic challenges. For this film, however, innovation meant returning to the past.

The director explained that he revisited many Japanese jidaigeki masterpieces from the 1950s, a period he considers the genre’s peak. Rather than imitating those films directly, he used them as a foundation to rethink how period cinema can exist today.

“I wanted to relearn from the masterpieces,” he said. “That became the new challenge for me.”

For Kiyoshi Kurosawa, engaging with film history is not an exercise in nostalgia. Instead, it represents a way of creating something contemporary while acknowledging forgotten cinematic traditions.

“Doing something new is often connected to rediscovering something from the past,” he noted. “That process itself becomes a new form of filmmaking.”

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During the 79th edition of the Cannes international Film Festival we spoke with the director Sompot Chidgasornpongse for his new film “9 Temples to Heaven“, presented here at the festival in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes section. The film is a beautiful spiritual and human journey that explores the true significance and cultural richness of the “nine temples pilgrimage” tradition in Thai society. This ritual indeed reflects deeply rooted traditions and spiritual beliefs that shape everyday life and artistic expressions in Thailand.

During our interview with FRED Film Radio, what director Sompot Chidgasornpongse explained is how the journey we see in his “9 Temples to Heaven” film serve as a meaningful spiritual practice for many Thais, symbolizing luck, reverence, and communal identity. This pilgrimage often involves visiting sacred sites, each holding historical and spiritual importance, allowing practitioners to connect with their cultural heritage. In Thai cinema, religion and culture are strictly connected, as often shown also by his master Apitchatpong Weerasethakul’s works. Everyday life in always tangled with the spiritual one, binding communities through shared rituals and beliefs. By portraying these elements authentically, “9 Temples to Heaven” enhances global understanding of Thailand’s spiritual tapestry rooted in the tradition.

“9 Temples to Heaven” by director Sompot Chidgasornpongse demonstrates how integral religion and ritual are within Thai culture, and how the temples symbolize more than religious practice: they embody a sense of continuity, comfort, and unity. Whether depicted through cinematic storytelling or daily rituals, this film settles as a cornerstone in portraying Thai spiritual life and cultural identity, illustrating their enduring influence and intertwining with each other.

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Winner of the People’s Choice Audience Award at the Quinzaine des Cinéastes at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning” is the fifth feature by British filmmaker Clio Barnard, adapted by Enda Walsh from the novel of the same name by Birmingham writer Keiran Goddard. The film follows five childhood friends, Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli and Conor, now in their thirties, as the lives they dreamed of begin to feel out of reach. Set in Birmingham and anchored in a working-class community navigating precarious jobs, a housing crisis and the weight of growing up, the film stars Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, Daryl McCormack and Lola Petticrew.

The project began when screenwriter Enda Walsh sent Clio Barnard the novel. She loved it immediately, particularly the way author Keiran Goddard had woven political questions into five brilliantly drawn characters, and she didn’t want it to end. But adapting a book made of five internal monologues was far from simple. “I was intrigued to see how Enda would adapt it because it’s not an easy book to adapt. How do you externalize what’s going on for five people internally and how do you weave five stories together into a film?”. Walsh wrote the script quickly and made key inventions, the character of Marcus, a dog that didn’t exist in the novel , that cracked the structure open. Barnard knew right away he had done it.

To build the world of the film with the authenticity it demanded, Clio Barnard went to the community where Keiran Goddard had grown up. Through the writer and his brother Tom, she found the Crown, a pub that became the nerve centre of the entire production. “It’s a really fantastic community hub because the people who run it are wonderful and they embraced us with open arms”. The Crown served as casting base, rehearsal space, workshop venue for local residents and, eventually, the set itself: all the pub scenes were shot there. The network of people they met through it provided the extras, the locations and the fabric of the film.

Creating the bond between five characters who are supposed to have known each other since childhood was essential. Clio Barnard had one advantage: Lola Petticrew and Anthony Boyle had actually known each other since they were teenagers and even dated briefly. The rest of the cast understood from the start what was needed. “They were just such a fantastic lovely group of people who were very collaborative and understood that what we needed to do was create a bond and a familiarity and for us to completely believe that they had grown up together”.

The film centres on a specific and quietly devastating moment in life: the passage into your thirties, when the open horizon of youth starts to close in. Clio Barnard sees it as something both personal and political: “In your twenties it feels like anything is possible and in your thirties reality bites. There’s a false promise that is made to people, especially young people, about getting a job, getting a place to live. It’s almost impossible to find a secure roof over your head or a secure job. Things are very out of balance and we need to do something about it”.

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Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont returns to the Cannes competition for the second time with “Coward“, a queer romantic drama set during the First World War. After “Girl”, which won the Caméra d’Or in Un Certain Regard in 2018, and “Close“, Grand Prix winner in 2022, Lukas Dhont‘s third feature follows Pierre, a young soldier newly arrived at the Belgian front, and Francis, a flamboyant comrade who organises a theatre show to lift the spirits of the men around him. While violence rages, both find ways to escape the brutality of war, even if only for a moment. The film stars Emmanuel Macchia, in his screen debut, alongside Valentin Campagne. The film will be distributed by MUBI.

The film began with a series of black-and-white photographs Lukas Dhont stumbled upon four years ago. They showed young soldiers stationed in a waiting camp behind the front lines, performing a small theatre piece for each other using the tools of war: munition boxes turned into a podium, sandbags into skirts, bullets into jewellery. As a Belgian, Lukas Dhont grew up driving through the fields where the battle was fought, yet he had never been told about this phenomenon. “I was really confronted with the politics of memory, in the sense that there are certain images of violence and brutality that we have always pushed to the front and buried underneath them are these expressions of freedom“. The discovery sparked something deeper: a film about how, in the darkest of times, people have tried to stay human by creating or by looking for the creations of others.

One of the film’s central challenges was writing a love story in which the two protagonists could never be alone. Lukas Dhont drew inspiration from the poetry of the period, where queer desire lingers between the lines, and from the literature of writers like Jane Austen, where what cannot be said is expressed through micro-gestures. “I thought secrecy can also be incredibly sexy. Sharing a secret with someone, sharing a passion and a desire and having to experience that in public while you are the only two who know, that can be incredibly sensual“.

Behind the theatre and the love story lies a political dimension. Lukas Dhont discovered that Belgian soldiers who tried to desert were executed, imprisoned or forced to disappear into invisible lives, never able to return home. He found in those hidden existences a resonance with the queer experience of the time: people who had to live in camouflage and love hidden in plain sight. “For me the film is really about people who have resisted throughout time the codes of the world that they are brought up in“. The title itself carries that charge: in a genre where heroism is measured by the capacity to harm, Lukas Dhont reclaims the word coward as something closer to courage.

Before becoming a director, Lukas Dhont worked extensively in casting, and he describes it as his favourite part of the filmmaking process. For the role of Pierre, a farmer’s son, he visited agriculture schools across Belgium. Emmanuel Macchia was there, timid, barely using the full register of his voice. “When I got to know him more, I discovered he is an incredible cinephile because he was on “Letterboxd” giving reviews to “Cinema Paradiso”. And then I just discovered this soul that felt very timeless“. Lukas Dhont paired him with Valentin Campagne, his opposite: loud, performative, someone who takes up space. The combination worked because Campagne drew Emmanuel Macchia out, while Macchia grounded Campagne. When working with young people, Dhont says, he likes to cast those who resonate with the role, because he knows they will become co-authors of the part.

Lukas Dhont is open about his complicated relationship with war films, a genre he says has traditionally offered men a very limited space to exist, where value is measured by the ability to act heroic, which in that definition means the ability to harm or kill. “As a young man growing up and trying to look for mirrors, I always felt a sense of shame because I thought I would never really be capable of that. I always felt much more like a coward than I felt like a hero“. Among the few war films he admires, he cites Jean Renoir‘s “Grand Illusion”, for its insight that the idea of an enemy is a construction, and Stanley Kubrick‘s “Fear and Desire”, for its intelligence in depicting an undefined conflict, allowing the film to speak about war in general rather than a specific moment in time.

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Presentada en la  competición oficial del 79º Festival de Cannes, “Amarga Navidad” es la nueva película escrita y dirigida por Pedro Almodóvar. Quim Gutiérrez interpreta a Santi, la pareja del alter ego del director, Raúl Durán, al que da vida Leonardo Sbaraglia. Un personaje construido desde el silencio, la ternura y una paz interior poco habitual en el cine de Almodóvar.

Quim Gutiérrez no esconde que llegar al universo de Pedro Almodóvar fue un camino largo. Había hecho pruebas para otras películas del director que no se concretaron, y con el tiempo se había resignado. Pero cuando finalmente llegó la llamada, la resignación se derrumbó. “Cuando finalmente ocurre, te llaman y te dan el papel, yo no pude evitar sentirme validado de alguna forma. El hecho de entrar en su mundo y sentir que, aunque sea una pequeña proporción, puedes ayudarle a contar una de sus historias y vas a formar parte de ese universo icónico”.

Reconoce que su participación fue cómoda: un personaje secundario con el que se sentía a gusto desde la primera lectura y con el que Pedro Almodóvar también estaba cómodo.

Lo que más le sorprendió de Almodóvar no fue su exigencia ni su estructura, sino algo que no esperaba encontrar: su fragilidad. En la primera reunión, una vez superada la vergüenza de tener al maestro delante, Quim Gutiérrez descubrió a un creador capaz de exponer las heridas personales en las que se basa el guion. “No pude anticipar su ternura. Vi su fragilidad y eso le hace ser muy generoso porque no todos los directores lo hacen. Compartió dudas en relación al modo de hacer el personaje y que un director de esa envergadura se atreva a decir “no lo tengo claro” me parece de una honestidad y madurez como creador increíble”.

Santi es un personaje inusual en la filmografía de Pedro Almodóvar: un hombre en paz consigo mismo, sin conflicto aparente, que acepta voluntariamente una posición secundaria junto a su pareja creadora. Quim Gutiérrez encontró en esa quietud algo profundamente atractivo. “Si Raúl tiene el talento de la escritura, Santi tendría el talento de vivir tranquilo y sabe que puede ayudar al otro dándole paz”. Nunca había interpretado a alguien que estuviera en paz consigo mismo y aceptara estar al cuidado de otro sin frustración. Le parece bonito mostrar ese acuerdo: aunque seguramente hay conflictos en la pareja, han encontrado un punto en el que ambos están cómodos.

El film plantea una pregunta que a Quim Gutiérrez le interesa especialmente: hasta dónde puede llegar un creador al tomar material de la vida de los demás. Su respuesta es firme: “Creo que sí debería haber límites porque somos personas antes que aquello a lo que nos dedicamos. El límite entre hacer daño a los demás y conseguir un éxito creativo es un límite en el que cada vez pesa más el no hacer daño”. Confiesa que a él mismo le ha ocurrido utilizar una anécdota ajena y que luego a esa persona le supiera mal. Es, dice, un debate interesante en el que no hay verdades cerradas.

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Presentada en la competición oficial del 79º Festival de Cannes, “Amarga Navidad” es la nueva película escrita y dirigida por Pedro Almodóvar. El film narra la historia de Elsa, una directora de publicidad interpretada por Bárbara Lennie, que tras la muerte de su madre durante las fiestas navideñas se refugia en el trabajo sin concederse el tiempo de elaborar el duelo. Su amiga Patricia, a quien da vida Victoria Luengo, la acompaña en un viaje a Lanzarote que pondrá a prueba los límites de su amistad y de sus respectivas capacidades de enfrentarse a la verdad. Producida por El Deseo y distribuida por Warner Bros, la película cuenta además con Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Milena Smit, Patrick Criado y Quim Gutiérrez.

Para ambas actrices, esta ha sido la segunda colaboración con Pedro Almodóvar, pero la decisiva. Bárbara Lennie reconoce que llegó al rodaje preparándose para lo desconocido: alrededor de Pedro hay muchas historias y anécdotas, pero desde el principio se sintió tranquila. Lo que la sorprendió fue el espacio que el director le concedió para compartir, preguntar y cuestionar. “Pedro está en un momento en el que creo que eso también le interesaba. Sus procesos creativos son intensos, como lo es él; son variantes y cambiantes como lo es él, con días mejores, con días peores, porque también sus películas hablan de eso, de gente que vive muy intensamente la vida”. Hay también un detalle revelador: rodaron casi toda la película de tarde, noche y madrugada, porque los mejores momentos de energía de Pedro Almodóvar empiezan a partir de las dos o tres de la mañana. Victoria Luengo, por su parte, confiesa que la segunda vez pudo disfrutar más. “Una de las cosas que más me va a acompañar es el recuerdo de la pasión que tiene en un set de rodaje. Le veo como si fuera un niño pequeño cuando está ahí; es algo vital para él, sin eso no podría vivir”.

La amistad entre Elsa y Patricia es uno de los ejes del film, pero no es una amistad de iguales. Para Bárbara Lennie, la clave no está en encontrar la llave para entrar en la vida del otro, sino en algo más difícil: dejarse ver. “A Patricia lo que le ocurre es que no es capaz de dejarse ver por su amiga. Le da tanta vergüenza lo que está viviendo, se siente tan humillada, que no lo quiere contar. La amistad tiene mucho que ver con que la otra persona te vea de verdad, con todo lo que tiene de bueno y todo lo que tiene de malo”.

Hay una secuencia en la que las dos escuchan juntas La Llorona y la canción que da título a la película. Para Pedro Almodóvar, cuenta Victoria Luengo, era una de las escenas más importantes: la primera vez que se atrevía a poner una canción casi entera y dejar que a través de ella un personaje tomara una decisión crucial. La ensayaron poco, casi nada. Bárbara Lennie cree que fue lo mejor. “Cuando uno se libera de la presión de lo que tiene que supuestamente ocurrir en una escena, es también una oportunidad preciosa. Son cosas que te pasan en privado, escuchando una canción, y poderlo hacer delante de la cámara me parece que es un privilegio”. Victoria Luengo recuerda el clima que se generó en el set ese día: todo el equipo atento, generoso, cuidando ese momento como una burbuja.

Pedro Almodóvar escribió en sus notas de producción que el autor no es dueño de sí mismo y que se funde con su obra. Preguntadas si les ocurre algo parecido al sumergirse en un personaje, Bárbara Lennie responde sin dudarlo. “Los momentos de mayor libertad que yo he experimentado han sido trabajando seguramente, rodando o encima de un escenario. Cuando dejas de timonear hay algo donde has conseguido subir a un lugar creativo donde ya estás amparada y entonces te puedes dejar ir y no ser dueña de todo lo que está ocurriendo”. Victoria Luengo lo traduce a una imagen más sencilla: es como ceder el volante a otra persona, y eso, cuando en la vida te cuesta soltar el control, da mucho gusto.

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