Gran Canaria’s first feature film Macu Machin, ‘‘to breed’Although it is not exactly a documentary, it cannot be described as fiction either because everything told in it is completely real. Actually his heroes Carmen Machín, Elsa Machín and Maura Pérez or in other words, the director’s mother and two aunts. “It was born out of my obsession with bringing all three together to tackle a subject that has been a family taboo for decades,” he explains of the film, which is part of a small group of Spanish productions participating in the festival this year. Berlinale, all outside the official competition. “I thought fiction could be a vehicle for a certain kind of catharsis.” The premise is simple: Elsa and Maura return after 20 years island PalmWhere his sister Carmen lives alone in an attempt to sort out the distribution of her parents’ inheritance. The reunion causes old conflicts to resurface, and the progression of Maura’s degenerative disease exacerbates this. “For all of us, making this movie also meant doing therapy,” the director recalls. “The logical thing was that this would end in disaster, but surprisingly it worked.”
‘Leaf litter’ gives a lot dramatic importance to climate elements not as much as any of the forces of nature Cumbre Vieja VolcanoIts explosion in the fall of 2021 coincided with its shooting. “For many people it was a tragedy,” Machín admits, “but I must admit that the film was very successful.” “He immediately became the fourth character in the movie; “It became a metaphor for all the feelings the heroes couldn’t express with words.” And a lot of these feelings, she adds, have to do with the lives these women have to lead because they are women. “My family’s reality is the same as that of many others on the island: The men went to America in search of new opportunities, and most never returned. Women were left alone and struggled to support both the land and the family. “In a way, the film is a tribute to them.”
Surviving in Fujimori’s Peru
Although it is much more tightly tied to the plot, ‘queens‘ is another fiction closely linked to its director’s personal biography. “It cannot be said that this is my story, but I experienced the emotions described in it,” explains the Peruvian. Klaudia Reynicke The film was also screened in the competition in Germany. “I left Lima for Switzerland with my mother and stepfather when I was only 10 years old, and although I always spoke Spanish with my mother, after a while I lost all real ties with my country.” The film is co-produced by Inicia Films, the Spanish company responsible for recent hits of our cinema such as ‘Verano 1993’, ‘Girls’ and ‘20,000 Species of Bees’. Located in Lima thirty years ago thinking about both a father who had to learn to behave this way before his two daughters immigrated to the United States with their mother, and a family in general having to stay together as the world as they knew it collapsed.
“This is not a political film, but the reality is that we went to Europe because the situation in our country was unsustainable at every level,” Reynicke explains. “And it seemed important to me to recreate this The context of both physical and psychological violence “Shaping people’s reality at that time.” ‘Queens’ takes place somewhere The country killed by inflationThe violence and violence committed by the terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso Pressure organized by head of government Alberto Fujimori. The director, whose third feature film serves to repair his relationship with his birthplace, comments, “Fortunately, that Peru no longer exists.” “For many years I did not feel Peruvian, neither Swiss nor a citizen of the United States, where I lived for a time, and this lack of connection did not matter to me at all. But maybe since I became a mother, I started to care about my roots. And ‘Queens’ largely satisfies my need to know where I came from and maybe understand where I’m going.”