In world cinema, teamwork and memory often collide as a shoot nears its end, when a commemorative T-shirt is given to the crew. On the back, in bold white letters, the line reads: “We are all strangers.”
That refrain underpins the film, which can be summed up as L’àvia and the Stranger. The story threads together three lives connected by a shared sense of displacement in a land that feels foreign to them. A tailor in a coastal town once left France in the sixties to scratch out a living. A Pakistani greengrocer arrives in a village, where locals once call him a Moor. And a young man from the Alicante area migrates to England in the challenging present, seeking a future that feels within reach even as it remains elusive.
Sensitive and ironic, with a touch of rough honesty, the feature marks the director’s return to the big screen after a lengthy pause. The director built a long career as a technician and short filmmaker, and this debut stakes a claim on everyday xenophobia. The film distills the subtle, often unspoken prejudices of ordinary life into small, palpable moments rather than loud statements.
The film, produced by Aire de Cinema and Alhena Production, follows Teresa, a town tailor who receives an unusual offer from Samir, a Pakistani greengrocer who is secretly a tailor in his homeland. The two partners must work together, but secrecy shadows their collaboration as they fear how the town may react if their plan is discovered. When Teresa dies, her grandson Enric, who lives in Manchester, returns to his hometown amid a personal crisis. He has long felt like an outsider in England, and now, back in his birthplace, sees himself as a stranger there too.
Across the film, universal aspirations surface: nostalgia for one’s homeland and a deep respect for difference. Four languages coexist on screen—Valencian, Spanish, English, and Urdu—spoken by Teresa, Samir, and Enric across past, present, and future. The texture of language mirrors the broader truth: in a connected world, we are all strangers, yet we are all neighbors in the same human frame.
The feature stars Neus Agulló, a veteran actress from Alcoy, alongside a cast that brings an international sensibility to the story. The project was developed in Barcelona and brought to life by creative teams across Spain and beyond. The talent pool includes familiar faces from television dramas and independent cinema, contributing a sense of lived experience to the film’s intimate scale.
The screenplay, a collaboration between the director and executive producer Mila Luengo, reflects a life spent around cinema and storytelling. The narrative could take place anywhere in inland Alicante or its surroundings, a nod to the region’s diverse social fabric. The director’s family owns one of Spain’s oldest drive-in cinemas, a detail that adds a personal layer to the film’s cinematic heartbeat. Filming began in mid-June, with production wrapping later in the week, and much of the work taking place in the Algar de Palància, a small town near Valencia. The Algar, with fewer than 500 residents, became a bustling set, as locals joined the production as extras and witnesses to a cinema party in motion. The proximity of Valencia, the crew’s home base, helped shape a practical and intimate shooting schedule, drawing on local talent and resources to bring the story to life.