Marina Alberti is afraid of losing her memory. “From a very young age, I was aware of my mother’s horror at the prospect of having the same thing happen to my grandmother with Alzheimer’s.” mother, writer Aitana Alberti; grandmother, writer María Teresa León, a member of the 27th Generation Husband and wife of poet Rafael Alberti until his death in 1988. “In the end, my grandmother was like the living dead, because losing the references around you, the people you love, and your ideals might be, The most painful thing that can happen to you. It’s like losing your life.” This fear is one of the reasons for the existence of his short film ‘Aitana’, his directorial debut, which he presented at the competition in Mostra today.
The film works as a reflection on memory, yes, but it does not understand it only as an individual ability to remember. The story of four generations of women from the same family and the historical memory of the country that Leon and Alberti had to keep alive are also told. to go into exile When the Franco regime began.
Apart from some archival footage of Franco’s posthumous return to Spain, ‘Aitana’ is entirely set in a room where the director shares moments of intimacy with his bedridden mother, forcing her to remember to fight. the progression of oblivion; next to him is the invisible ghost of Leon. Later on, the main character of the movie, the baby who has just started life and cannot understand that his grandmother, who is holding her foot, has come to the end of her life, enters the scene.
“I think every director who decides to make a movie about his life and family should inevitably watch this movie. deal with humility”says the director. He admits that he could not sit for a long time in front of the images that emerged during the filming of the film. “I decided to go in front of the camera because I knew it was the only way to get my mom to open up, and it took me a long time to come to terms with my own presence in the movie. Fortunately, over time, I managed to separate myself from what appeared on the screen. Now all I want is to share it with the public.”