15 years have passed Carla Subira He premiered his first feature-length documentary to date at the Berlinale. first fiction movie, ‘Sica’, but this information is based on a distinction that doesn’t make sense to him. If “Nadar” (2008) was a fictional documentary film, now “Sica” is fiction based on documentary methodology,” says the Barcelona-based filmmaker. “For me, both formats are two sides of the same coin.”
The new movie stars a 14-year-old girl who hopes the sea will bring her body back after her father’s shipwreck and embarks on an adventure while investigating the circumstances of her father’s death. painful journey of discovery. The film was shot on the Costa da Morte in La Coruña, whose sea is one of the most dangerous in the world. “I visited in 2016 and was amazed,” Subirana recalls. “The emotional impact it had on me convinced me that I should make a movie there.”
Presence of both ‘Sica’ and ‘20,000 bee species’ in the Berlinale, estibaliz urresola seems to confirm the good standing of Spanish cinema by women, which this year’s aspirant for the Golden Bear; In recent years this festival has served as a launching pad for the careers of filmmakers like Carla Simón, Pilar Palomero and Alauda Ruiz de Azúa without going any further; In any case, Subirana avoids victory.
Insufficient presence of women
“The female presence in our cinema when I premiered ‘Nadar’ painful anecdote, and it is clear that we have come a long way; but statistics show that the presence of women is still very meagre. Such an imbalance cannot be corrected in two days. We have to keep working.”
If ‘Sica’ was shot by a Catalan in Galicia, ‘Samsara’ – today screened at the competition in Germany outside of the official competition – is a Galician film shot between Laos and Zanzibar. Lois Patiño’s beautiful new movie cycle of birth, life, death and resurrection used in some religions and schools of philosophy as a tool to bring the two cultures together; embodied by a school of Buddhist monks; the other by a community of women working on seaweed farms.
Clearly split in two by the hypnotic interlude of purely experimental cinema—which Patiño conceived based on references such as the works of Stan Brakhage and Derek Jarman’s “Blue” (1993), “Samsara” affirms something akin to a spin. Vigo’s job. initially focused Galician tradition and legendIn recent years, he has also ventured to explore other cultural traditions – through the short films ‘Sycorax’ (2021) and ‘Hand sowing stars’ (2022). “I’ve always been a traveler,” admits Patiño about it. “And I’m interested in getting rid of the homogeneity of Western culture that dominates our screens, because seeing life from other angles can teach us a lot.”