ORIA FILMS

Interview for Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

1. Why did you decided to make a movie about child abuse?
One day I heard the story of a young boy who had been sexually abused by his music teacher. Another day, I heard about a teenager who had been suffering due to her grandfather’s perversions for several years. These stories were told to me by some friends who work as therapists helping people who have suffered –or are suffering– this sort of abuse. And I wanted to know more. That is how this story began. I got in touch with several victims and talked with them. I was shattered when I heard their stories and learnt about their suffering, caused by such a horrible aggression. Above all, I felt a deep admiration when I saw the valour and courage with which they face the need to rebuild their lives on a daily basis. That is how I discovered the impressive dramatic and personal richness that was behind the experiences I heard: stories of silences, of guilt, of manipulation and dependencies. But also stories of survival, of fighting against adversity, against humiliation, against submission. «Don’t be afraid» was inspired by all of this material. A film about their determination to face a traumatic fate; about their will to build up their own future; about the need to show on the screen a dark truth our society insists on ignoring.

2. In the movie also perform real victims of abuse. How long were you working with them? Weren´t they afraid of becoming that public?
For more than one year and a half I contacted victims of abuse who wanted to tell me their stories, their experiences. I lived with their pain and hope, I talked with the therapists who helped them, and I tried to distance myself from the topics that surround this theme to analyse the complexity of some human behaviours without preconceptions. It was a very gratifying job.
People I talked with were in a very advanced therapeutical recovery process, and part of that recovery process consits on accepting and talking about their past without feeling guilty or afraid of being rejected. Talking about it was useful to be accepted and undestood by their closest relations and to show that they were not responsible for the acts that had destroyed their lives.

3. Did you and María Laura Gargarella write your screenplay based on these tragic experiences?
When we wrote the screenplay, we were interested on showing the important psychological and physical consequences inflicted by abuses. Among them, it is important to mention the lack of self-esteem, loneliness, guilt and depression. But we also wanted to show that it is possible to face up all these consequences, to go out of that hell and to recover personal dignity, although it is not an easy task, because people who have suffered abuses usually distort emotional and sexual relationships and this determines their behaviour and making them vulnerable to various addictions, in some cases, even a dependence on their own sexual aggressors.

4. «No Tengas Miedo» is fabulous film but it isn´t easy to watch. Was it intentional to make the movie quite so paralysing?
I have been aware of this proposal from the very beginning. In my films, I am not interested in showing but in suggesting. It is the audience who has to complete what the story doesn’t tell. It is only when the audience takes part that the film gets its own sense. In «No tengas miedo», what is hard is not what the images show but what they hide, what the audience feels and reconstructs using its imagination. So, this is why this is not an easy film to watch. I wanted the audience to follow this essential path with Silvia, to feel her suffering, her pain, her anguish, her lonliness. I wanted it to take part in her impotence, her embarrassment, her fears, as well as her determination to face up her past, her desire to change her present, her perseverance on building her own future.

5. Was the shooting for you and your actors mentally challenging, given the theme of the story?
I talked with the actors from the very beginning, especially with Michelle Jenner and Lluís Homar, so that their characters would neither determine nor affect their relationships with the rest of the crew. All of us managed to establish a difference between character and person , so we were able to make jokes and chat, even on the hardest shooting days. In this way, the theme of the story did not make the shooting difficult but it made relationships to be easier and the crew was interested in knowing more about the consequences of abuses and about the high percentage of people who have suffered them.

6. What about the cast- how did Lluís Homar personally face up to playing a real human monster? What did your collaboration look like? Was it complicated for you to explain what you wanted from him as an actor?
Lluís Homar knew about the project from the first draft of the screenplay and he immediately accepted to take part in this film despite being aware of the complexity of his character, the difficulty of playing his role and the rejection he was going to provoke in the audience. His attitude shows his great generosity and professionalism. We started working on his character several months before shooting. I lent him books, films and testimonies of paedophiles, on their behaviour, their feelings, the way they live such a reality on a daily basis. We talked a lot, and it wasn’t an easy job for him to play such a complex character, one that was some times adorable and often a monster. It was a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Lluís also talked with the psychologists who gave us advice on the film to find out more about his character. Rehearsing with him and Michelle Jenner two months before shooting started, made things easier.

7. What about the scene of abuse. How long were you thinking about how the whole scene should look like? It must have been really challenging and difficult work. Can you describe the genesis of the scene?
I was very woried about this scene because it is the key to understand there is a time before and after in Silvia’s life and in the life of everyone who has suffered such abuse. In the screenplay, the scene was planned to be a situation where Silvia’s games and laughs suddenly interrupt and turn into fright, panic, incomprehension. The place where this happened was crucial for me, and it took us a long time to find the right place to shoot the scene as I had imagined it. I didn’t want that this trip to horror took place in just one part of the house, but in several, as if the child was walking fearless from one part to another, until her innocence was trapped on a sofa. I wanted there was a space link between the dinning room, where the child laughs and plays with her father, and the living room, where she is abused for the first time. I wanted this linking space to allow a seamless movement from one space to another, without any rupture, as Silvia’s face would show the real rupture that takes place inside herself, between the innocent world (with games and laughs) and the incomprehensible abyss in front of her.

8. How were you working with child actress Irene Cervantes?
Irene did not have any experience shooting. As well as the other child and both adolescents, they were chosen through a casting done in schools and high-schools in Pamplona, the city where we shot the film. We worked for several months with a coach who helped them with following the instructions I gave. Neither Irene nor Maider (her friend Maite in the film) knew about the real plot of the film but their parents did. We talked with them, they read the screenplay and I explained to them how we were going to shoot the scenes. We planned the shooting as a game where they had to be happy, sad, angry, absentee, depending on the stories we told them. That is the way I work with children: I try to make their faces show the feelings and moods a character needs, but by making them take part in stories and situations as a part of a game.

9. I admired the film narration – it´s quite pure, no unnecessary music or dialogues, no Silvia´s nightmares or memories. Just an excellent Michelle Jenner.
I wanted to avoid any manipulation of the story. I wanted the narrative to be as natural as possible, that the camera was the audience’s eyes placed over Silvia’s face or nape. This required a staging without cuts, where the sequence shot marked the rhythm and the dramatic progress of each situation, of each scene. I think that, as there shot sequences were not designed to change the point of view and direct the audience’s gaze, we manage to identify with Silvia. And it is for the same reason, I avoided non-diegetic music, as the music included in the film results in a manipulation, an external addition to the plot.

10. Why did you let the character of the father go unpunished, without the sentence he deserved?
When I was working with people who had suffered abuses, I understood that the most important fact for many victims in their recovery process, was to manage to face up to their aggressors, to express their feelings in front of them, to get over the anguish they feel. This mental and psychological triumph in front of the person who has destroyed their lives is more important than the punishment of the aggressors. Although they have to be acused and condemned, this does not help victims if they do not manage to get over fear, guilt or dependence. This is why I was more interested on showing the confrontation between Silvia and her father as an essential part of this recovery process and to show that she is able to stare at him, to control her fear, to emerge victorious for the first time since she had been abused. This is an essential step in Silvia’s life and from that moment she will be able to make decisions and také charge of her destiny.

11. What reaction are you expecting from the audience? Is there a special behaviour you specially wanted to provoke in your spectators?
We would like this film to be considered our little contribution, that could be used to raise a theme that nobody wants to talk about. Only if we know about it and if we face it, we will be able to find solutions. Unfortunately, there is a very high percentage of people who have suffered from abuse and most of them take place within the family circle. This is why they are hidden and passed over in silence. It is necessary that society doesn’t look the other way, as the character’s mother does in the film, and to create programs to prevent, detect and help these cases in schools and families. On the other hand, we would like for this film to help abused people feel accompanied and understood in their fight to rebuild their lives.

12. Do you think that cinema can help solve social issues? And if you do, how?
Cinema and audiovisual media in general, have a great capacity to broadcast and communicate. The power of images in our society can not be denied. In this sense, cinema can serve to reflect our reality, to spread it and to make audience think about it. But the solution to our problems and needs must surge from within society. Citizens have to get involved in the construction of a better and more humane society. Cinema and other arts can help us understand reality, even think about the need to modify it, but they can not do it by themselves. This is why my thoughts on cinema coincide with what Jean Renoir said: «What I consider to be important when making films is not to make them perfect , but to make them in a way which may serve to improve and facilitate relationships between people»