Quijote Films, the producer of Chile’s entry to the upcoming Oscars “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” has boarded “Mariana x BHP,” a Brazilian documentary directed and produced by Renan Flumian of Droma Productions.
Developed over six years and filmed across 17 cities on three continents, the documentary delves into the largest environmental lawsuit in history, following the devastating collapse of the Mariana dam in Brazil. Featuring over 200 hours of footage, the project won a cash prize at the Lau Haizetara Forum in San Sebastián and was presented this week to buyers and platforms at Madrid’s 5th Iberseries & Platino Industria.
Quijote Films is also a co-producer on 2025 Berlinale Silver Bear winner “The Blue Trail,” which has already surpassed 150,000 admissions in Brazilian cinemas, and the upcoming “A Colmeia,” filmed earlier this year in the Atacama Desert with Brazilian producer Sara Silveira.
“Collaborating with Brazil has been an incredible experience,” said Quijote Films’ Giancarlo Nasi who said his connection to Brazil goes back many years when he studied there and, for over a decade, served as a mentor at BrLab. “I’ve seen up close the strength and resilience of their film industry. Working hand-in-hand with Brazilian partners continues to affirm why Brazil is such a valuable ally for Quijote,” he said.
“With ‘Mariana x BHP,’ we continue to strengthen our international co-production strategy, developing content across the Americas and beyond. Next year, we’ll be in production on projects with partners in Canada, Argentina, Mexico and the U.S. Creating global content with international talent is part of our DNA—just like the commitment to excellence and craft we’ve inherited from auteur cinema,” he pointed out.
“This week at Iberseries, as we presented it to platforms, we felt we had a film with a strong identity – socially and politically resonant, yet with the potential to reach a wide audience. We’re shaping it with the tone of a legal thriller: compelling, critical of the system, conversation-starting, but also deeply engaging,” said Quijote Films producer Sergio Karmy, who extended his gratitude to the Quijote team led by their department head Eugenia Campos, who “together with Giancarlo, is behind the entire creative universe – the pitches, the decks, all the incredible materials we use every day.”
“As a Brazilian director, I’ve witnessed firsthand the stories of the victims in Brazil and the lawyers who formed an unprecedented alliance to take on the world’s largest mining company,” said Flumian who had been closely following the unprecedented class action in London for six years.
He added: “This documentary follows their fight for justice and the broader potential of the case to reshape how multinational corporations are held accountable—not just in Latin America, but across the Global South. Starting from a local tragedy, the film reveals how global power actually operates, through a narrative that is gripping, emotional and resonates with audiences around the world.”
Flumian’s previous credits include “The Hardest Conversation to Have With Your Parents” (NYT Op-Docs, 2024), which was lauded internationally for its raw portrayal of intergenerational conversations about intimacy; the documentary series “Acende a Luz “(Globoplay, 2023), which explores sexuality in later life and the upcoming action-comedy “Velhos Bandidos,“ starring the legendary Fernanda Montenegro, nominated for an Academy Award for her perf in Walter Salles’ “Central Station” and a star of “I’m Still Here.”
In 2022, Pedro Almodóvar hailed “Lullaby,” the feature debut of Basque director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa as “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years.” Her first series, “Querer,” acquired by Arte, won the top prize this year at Series Mania, the top TV festival in Europe.
Now, if the enthusiastic reaction of most Spanish reviewers is anything to go by, Ruiz de Azúa’s “Sundays” (“Los Domingos”) sees her make good on the promise detected by Almodóvar. With a days of main competition films still to play at San Sebastián, the family drama – which would also be a coming of age tale if that process were so truncated – sits top, head-and-shoulders among other competitors for San Sebastian’s Golden Shell on Basque newspaper El Diario Vasco’s critics’ poll.
The film’s title draws on an irony, Ruíz de Azúa said at a San Sebastián press conference. Sundays were supposed to be a time when a Spanish family comes together over lunch. In her film, Sundays show a family falling apart.
One underlying cause of contention is economic. Father Iñaki has drawn a bank loan against his mother’s flat to prop up his failing restaurant business. There is little sign that, if the family’s grandmother dies, Maite will get part of the inheritance.
The catalyst of building friction, however, is Iñaki’s eldest daughter Ainara who begins the film begging Maite to persuade Iñaki to let her go on a retreat organized by the local Betinas convent nuns, an enclosed order. “Why do you want to shut yourself up with a load of old women,” Iñaki asks.
It turns out the retreat is one step in a process of “discernment,” Ainara’s spiritual director, a dashing young priest explains to Iñaki and Maite, where Ainara will learn from God – with whom she already talks sometimes, she says – what He wants of her. Maite tries to talk Ainara out of making a decision so soon: She should choose the life she wants but not before living life, going to university, for instance, before choosing.
One question in the film is whether Ainara has been deeply wounded by the death of her mother, who was deeply religious, and the distance of her father, driving her to seek the warmth of another mother, Prioress Mother Isabel, and another father, the Father.
“I feel loved by Him,” Ainara insists. She doesn’t mention feeling being loved by her family. When she doesn’t back down, Maite takes more radical action.
“This is an austere, sober film. Textures, colors repeat in Ainara’s family home and the Betinas Convent. There are very few shots of the sky, Ruiz de Azúa noted at a “Sundays” press conference. “I wanted the two worlds, which could appear very different, to belong to the same world.”
“Sundays” is produced by Movistar Plus+, the biggest Spanish pay TV/SVOD operator, as well as Marisa Fernández Armenteros’ Buenapinta Media (“The Mole Agent”), Sandra Hermida at Colosé Producciones (“Society of the Snow”), Nahikari Ipiña at Sayaka Producciones, and Manu Calvo at Encanta Films (“Wounded”).The film is sold internationally by France’s Le Pacte, BTeam Pictures will distribute in Spain, releasing the film on Oct. 14. “
Variety talked to Ruiz de Azua before the world premiere of “Sundays.”
“Sundays” turns on a liberal Basque family which is shocked when the daughter Ainara, 17, announces she is considering becoming a cloistered nun….
One issue in the film is the fragility of tolerance, which is a fictitious tolerance, adopted to avoid conflicts. A genuine, intimate, authentic tolerance regarding what other people think is often difficult, right? That fragility is very much related to the weakness or fragility of a family.
It’s notable that Ainara finds it easier to talk to God than with her own father.
I started to write “Sundays” because I was interested in he theme of religion vocation but it became a new way to talk about the adult family world. A family should be a refuge for love, where there’s more communication, where things are talked about, attempting to understand other people…The adults in the film don’t talk about what they really feel, or their real intentions. Except for Maite and when she explodes, everything does.
You’ve also talked about adolescent vulnerability….
The film’s tension is based on whether Ainara’s vocation is spiritual, genuine, authentic or induced or provoked by her family world which is weakening. I have tried to create a space where spectate can draw their own conclusions. Is there something lacking, or a wound, an adult world which pushes her to look in another place for refuge, the affection which she doesn’t encounter at home?
And you suggest that both factors operate…
It’s complex. But not all girls who goes to a religious high school or a retreat end up becoming nuns. So though the religious world can push her in that direction, you have the sensation’s there’s more driving her.
Two sources of emotion in the film is the use of music, the Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms,” used in the film and the trailer, which Ainara sings in the school choir, and religious music when Ainara and her friends go to a disc and experience first love. There’s a sense of the liturgy of such scene, a sense of the secular sacred….
It’s one of my favourite sequences. Apart from its ethical and political dilemas, the film tries to evoke a sensation of the spiritual, to feeling alive, to look for something more which isn’t necessarily be found in a convent. I liked the idea that even those of us who are not believers need to believe in something, which can be the family we create or our partner.
James Vanderbilt is offering insight into how he shot the courtroom showdown in his latest film,Nuremberg.
The filmmaker, best known for writing David Fincher’s Zodiac, has come to San Sebastian Film Festival to present his two-and-a-half-hour World War II flick, following the cat-and-mouse game between Russell Crowe‘s Nazi chief Hermann Goring and Rami Malek‘s American psychologist Douglas Kelley as the U.S., U.K., France and Soviet Union prepared to put dozens of Hitler’s men on trial in 1945 and 1946.
At the movie’s press conference on Thursday, Vanderbilt (also writer on The Amazing Spider-Man and Independence Day: Resurgence) discussed filming the courtroom showdown in the feature’s final act between U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) and Crowe as the charming, cunning Goring, whom the allies were concerned could evade justice.
Vanderbilt explained that a producer had laid out the three-day shoot, spanning 20 pages of dialogue, for the verbal dual between the two actors. “I said, Michael Shannon and Russell Crowe won’t want to do that,” Vanderbilt began. “They’re going to want to do it in one day. And she said, ‘It’s 20 pages of dialogue. That’s a terrible idea.’ So I went to both of them and I said, ‘You know, we’re supposed to shoot this over three days. They’re both like, ‘No. We’re going to do this in one. What are you talking about?’”
The director had four cameras positioned across the room, though his job was made more difficult by staying faithful to historical accuracy. “Usually, you have the lawyers that will walk around, but the way that courtroom is set up, the prosecutor never moves. It’s just shot, shot, shot, shot, shot. We set up, and we were doing 25-minute takes with no cuts,” he continued, “and they were word-perfect every time because we took all the real transcripts.”
“After the first take, the entire courtroom of extras applauded Michael and Russell,” said Vanderbilt. “Just watching those two gentlemen put on a masterclass… I’ve never shot a 25-minute take in a movie in my life. I don’t think I ever will again.” He added: “That, I think, was one of the most amazing [experiences].”
Vanderbilt was also probed on the film’s eerie reflection of current-day politics, especially in his native U.S., where the threat of authoritarianism has never loomed so large. “I started working on [this] 13 years ago, and I thought it was just an incredible story… this idea of a psychiatric [doctor] in World War II who gets the opportunity to [examine] what the nature of evil is, I felt that it was such a fascinating thing to try and capture… It is relevant now, and I think unfortunately, it’ll be relevant in the future, but it’s just such an incredible story that takes place at such an incredible time.”
Naturally, Vanderbilt was asked about Crowe’s preparation for stepping into the role of Hitler’s right-hand man, and lauded the actor’s skill. “Russell Crowe — he is one of the biggest reasons this movie exists today,” said Vanderbilt, explaining how Crowe stayed with the film through the rocky seas of acquiring and losing funding over the years. “We talked a lot about it. He said to me, ‘Look, it’s not a great mental space to live in for me.’”
But Crowe “fully committed and invested in” Nuremberg, said the director, “and did an incredible amount of research. He traveled around Germany to the different places in [Goring’s] childhood. He really put himself in depth to it. And I’m just eternally grateful for the commitment he put into this film and the work he did because he’s Russell forever. He doesn’t necessarily need to do that anymore, but he was as hungry as an actor as I’ve ever seen anyone, and that was a true gift.”
Among other films, Vanderbilt also described enjoying seeing Malek’s “inquisitiveness and magnetism” that he “doesn’t always get to use in films.” He said: “He’s never the hero.” Shannon, he continued, “is an actor’s actor.”
Nuremberg‘s supporting cast includes Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O’Brien, Colin Hanks, Richard E. Grant and Wrenn Schmidt. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and hits theaters Nov. 7.
The San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.
Brazil-based Sambaqui Cultural has boarded the “The Sky That We Paint” (“El cielo que pintamos”), the latest from Chile’s Camilo Becerra. It joins Storyboard Media, which also collaborated with Becerra on his last film, “Maybe It’s True What They Say About Us.”
“Maybe It’s True…” world premiered at the San Sebastian Festival last year, and is now streaming on Prime Video after a festival run that included Göteborg, Chicago and Havana.
“The Sky That We Paint” follows three troubled teen siblings Ana (15), Matías (16) and Iggy (16) – as they deal with the challenges of youth, trauma and taboo. Bound by shared grief and a longing to escape their realities, Ana and Iggy form a powerful connection that spirals into a passionate but ultimately damaging relationship—one that leaves deep, lasting wounds. Years later, they reunite in search of Matías and a chance to recapture the innocence they once shared, only to discover that time has reshaped everything beyond recognition. The lead roles will be played by upcoming Chilean stars Clemente Rodríguez (“El Conde”) and Octavio Bernasconi (“La Jauria”).
“I really appreciated the conceptual perspective of Camilo Becerra in his previous film ‘Maybe What They Say About Us Is True’ and I was very interested in the idea of joining forces to produce his new project,” said Sambaqui Cultural’s Joana Nin.
“We’re experiencing a great moment for cinema in Brazil. Sambaqui Cultural has grown significantly in recent years. It’s a good time for international collaborations, so I’m very happy to be finalizing this co-production agreement with Storyboard Media here at the San Sebastián Festival,” she added.
Aside from producing, Nin has directed a string of documentaries and feature films, led by Rio Film Festival winner “Captive Hearts.” Her Sambaqui Cultural partner Ade Muri’s credits include A Fabrica-produced “Não vamos pagar nada” and Pai em Dobro.”
“At Storyboard Media, we have consolidated in recent years a production model aimed at connecting Latin American talent with global audiences. This is a remarkable moment to drive international co-productions and expand our strategic partnerships,” said Carlos Nuñez, co-founder of Storyboard Media alongside Gabriela Sandoval.
He added: “We are thrilled to seal this co-production agreement with Sambaqui Cultural, bringing on board a key partner from such an important territory as Brazil. In this sense, the San Sebastián Film Festival is a vital platform to build bridges between Latin America and Europe and to showcase stories with both artistic depth and commercial potential beyond our borders.”
Set in late-1990s Santiago, the film weaves an intimate coming-of-age story with a sharp reflection on Chile’s authoritarian and neoliberal legacy. Becerra, known for exploring themes of social and familial rupture—draws on his own teenage experiences to craft a raw, contemplative portrait of youth on the edge.
The latest news comes as Chile continues to punch above its weight in festivals and markets worldwide. Its presence in San Sebastian is led by Cannes Un Certain Regard winner “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo”, and Dominga Sotomayor’s “Swim to Me” (“Limpia”), both competing in the festival’s Horizontes Latinos sidebar, “Swim” opening the major sidebar. Two other pics also compete in the sidebar: “Cuerpo Celeste” by Nayra Ilic Garcia and Venice Best Screenplay winner “The Ivy,” co-produced by Chile’s Clara Larraín of Clara Films.
Storyboard Media is among the various delegates from Chile that include award-winning producer Giancarlo Nasi whose Quijote Films produced “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Chile’s submission to the Oscars, and who also participates in San Sebastian’s Lau Haizetara documentary co-production forum with “Mariana X BHP.”
Other Chilean participants in the co-production forum are Araucaria Cine, which brings “Sublime Pact” by Ignacio Juricic, at San Sebastian’s fiction Co-Production Forum; Marianne Mayer-Beckh’s El Otro Film with animated feature “Winnipeg Seeds of Hope” and Axolotl with “Do Not Let Me Die Alone” by Renan Flumian, another Co-Production Forum title.
Among the Chilean Works in Progress are “The Neverending Plague” (“La plaga sin fin”), a fantasy fiction film by Cristobal Leon and Joaquin Cociña. The multi-country co-production is led by Chile’s Catalina Vergara of Globo Rojo Films. Another Co-Production Forum contender is archive footage film “El atletismo y el amor” by Alejandra Moffat, also produced by Vergara.
British producer Mike Goodridge spoke to the advantages of going global on Tuesday at a San Sebastian Film Festival event.
The Good Chaos founder appeared during a fireside event for the fest’s Creative Investors’ Conference, now in its second year, where across a two-day event, a myriad of the world’s top producers come to talk funding, failures and fears as execs try to keep up with a rapidly-changing industry.
The ex-Protagonist CEO, the focus of a recent The Hollywood Reporter profile ahead of Venice, has had a wild festival run this summer with Laszlo Nemes’ historical drama Orphan, Imran Perretta’s coming-of-age debut Ish,and Helen Walsh’s erotic sophomore feature On the Sea. He comes to the fest on Spain’s northern coast to talk business, but another of his heavyweights is set to screen: Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Playerwith Colin Farrell.
Speaking with Wendy Mitchell, San Sebastian’s U.K. and Nordic delegate and Investor’s Conference organizer, Goodridge took attendees through his hotly anticipated projects, including Finnish action thriller Sisu: Road to Revenge, and pondered over the support for the British film industry.
“I think it’s a blessing and a curse we share the same language as the U.S.,” he said about balancing Britain’s undeniable talent and IP with Hollywood money, adding: “Most of the film technicians in the U.K. are employed by American companies. Harry Potter is a British thing, but it’s not, it’s American. Same with James Bond. So our independent films have to advocate this path through the clutter of Americanism.”
“The U.K. has a great cinema legacy,” he continued. “It’s a great cinema country. And every year, there are some fantastic new films. I’d love to make some great, big British films. I’m planning to,” he said, adding that there is “good support” for indie films from the likes of the British Film Institute (BFI) and BBC Film.
When pressed to answer whether he agrees that the U.K. is not “traditionally a great co-producer” and that Goodridge is one of two or three producers in Britain working globally, he responded: “That’s my case really, is to look internationally. It’s almost been my interest to look at the world and the new voices and styles — of Hollywood, too, but I don’t think I would make films in the U.S. particularly well… I much prefer exploring the world, and I’m very comfortable doing that, and I plug in the U.K. financing whenever I can.”
Though the travel brings perks, the exec also admitted to facing an enormous amount of difficulty while trying to make Ballad in Macau, China, where the film is set. “Shanghai Surprise (1986), remember that? With Madonna. Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom (1984), Now You See Me 2 (2016),” Goodridge listed as films that have all been shot in Macau. “[But] it was one of the most challenging things I ever had to do, get that film made.”
He said: “It’s a very small city. It’s a city state, really. It’s a population of 600,000, so it’s very hard to kind of build up an indigenous industry. You go through Hong Kong, which is often not the easiest, because they don’t know much about Macau either… Edward would point at a piece of land that he wanted to shoot on, we couldn’t find out who owned the land. Nobody in government, nobody knew. [Laughs.] So we couldn’t get permission to shoot that.” Ballad is backdropped by the city’s infamous casinos, which also proved tasking. “Shooting the casinos was incredibly challenging,” Goodridge said, “because at any moment you’re shooting, there’s a loss of revenue to them.”
Goodridge went into more detail across the session about working with Sean Baker and why attracting a good cast will always start with the film’s director. He touched on his extensive ambitions to get into television producing and teased a little about an upcoming rom-com he’s working on called Paris-Hollywood, adapted from the novel by French film critic Cécile Mury. Paris-based Haut et Court and Good Chaos, two of the founding members of the Fremantle-backed indie production collective The Creatives, secured the film rights to Mury’s work in February.
The San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.
Inspired by Kirmen Uribe’s fact based novel “La hora de despertarnos juntos,” the Basque drama retraces the life of a real-life figure, Karmele Urresti, a nurse forced into exile during the Spanish Civil War. Played by Jone Laspiur, she falls in love with trumpet player Txomin Letamendi (Eneko Sagardoy) in France, and together they build a family across Paris, Caracas and Bilbao while navigating the fracture between love, loyalty and political conviction.
Altuna was struck by the density of events packed into the couple’s biography: expulsion, clandestine work against the dictatorship, collaboration with U.S. intelligence, two exiles in as many decades. “The temptation was to chase the sweep of history,” he admits, but the film deliberately narrows its gaze. “I had to restrain myself. What mattered most was their inner life — their dignity, but also their doubts, fears and contradictions.”
The relationship at the center of the film reflects that tension between personal and political. Txomin throws himself into militancy, committed to the collective cause. Karmele looks toward the family, to care, to the future of her children. Neither yields, and the fracture between their paths becomes part of the film’s central conflict. Altuna insists this is what makes them relatable: strength mixed with fragility, love complicated by conviction.
Language itself becomes a field of resistance. Karmele’s mother, Carmen, was a teacher barred from her profession for giving classes in Basque. “She was disqualified and banished for 15 years, simply for teaching children who often didn’t speak another language,” Altuna told Variety.
That experience shapes Karmele’s outlook, even in exile. She dedicates herself to ensuring her children recover the freedom to speak the forbidden tongue. “It’s not only a story of militancy or exile; it’s about transmission. Identity is preserved through language. In the everyday, in the small things, a battle for dignity is also fought.”
The film’s visual and sonic texture reflects that interplay between joy and loss. Early sequences hum with music, Basque folk, jazz, salsa conveying the excitement of discovery as exiles navigate new worlds. The Eresoinka choir’s rendition of Gernika embodies the defiance of a displaced community, while an improvised bertsolari verse reaches back toward something primal. Yet when the family returns to Bilbao, the soundtrack falls away. “Suddenly, there is silence. That was a conscious decision. Only then is the weight of oppression truly felt,” Altuna explained.
He and composer Aitor Etxeberria avoided dramatic scoring, leaning instead on diegetic music and the absence of sound. “We didn’t want to impose an emotion,” the director explains. “Silence itself becomes oppressive. The audience is left space to construct their own narrative.”
Visually, the film favors ellipsis and detail. Instead of re-creating battles, Altuna lingers on gestures: a farmer bartering milk for squid, a father hiding valuables in a chest, a woman’s arms folded. “Nature has its own drama. I like to dwell on nuances, on what connects us to memory,” he said. “Those images come from stories I heard as a child, from the fragments of war that reached us in peacetime. They are part of my truth.”
Karmele
Actors Jone Laspiur (“Ane Is Missing”) and Eneko Sagardoy (“Irati”) worked closely from accounts given by Karmele’s surviving children, who described her speech, gestures and way of facing life. Weeks of preparation preceded the short shoot, allowing performances to emerge naturally. “The actors knew exactly where they were in each scene,” Altuna recalled. “Rehearsals, costumes, sets — everything helped step into another era. The result feels balanced: performance, staging, narrative all supporting each other.”
Though grounded in Basque experience, “Karmele” aims wider. It asks what happens when the world collapses and people are forced to decide between surrender and dignity. “This is not just another Civil War film. If the same events were happening today, anywhere rights are violated and fear imposed, it would be the same story. It speaks to how we sustain humanity in the midst of chaos.”
The director is especially drawn to the way his protagonists chose art as a form of resistance. Basque exiles formed the Eresoinka choir to tour Europe, warning of fascism’s advance through music and dance. “Against violence and authoritarianism they opted for culture. They believed art could alert democracies to barbarism,” he says.
Altuna sees parallels today. “That border between freedom and oppression can blur very quickly. At a time when totalitarianism resurfaces in different parts of the world, cinema too can be a form of resistance — and of continuing to believe in the possibility of a fairer world.”
The Danish-Norwegian filmmaker, an Academy Award nominee for his 2021 romantic dramedy The Worst Person in the World, is also known for Reprise (2006), Oslo, August 31st (2011) and Louder Than Bombs (2015). His most recent project, winner of Cannes’ Grand Prix this year Sentimental Value, is screening here at the 73rd San Sebastian Film Festival.
The film follows Trier’s frequent collaborator Renate Reinsve as Nora who, along with her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), are faced to confront their strained relationship with their father, a fading director named Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard). Elle Fanning also stars in the movie as a U.S. actress, Rachel Kemp, hoping to be in Borg’s next feature.
Trier spoke — and Reinsve, in attendance, watched on — at the discussion in San Sebastian where he fielded a myriad of questions about his journey to film stardom and working predominantly in Europe. The director explained how he set the precedent to have final cut on all his films when, in the wake of the success of Reprise, he was tasked with finding a U.S. studio to work with.
“I need final cut, I’ve had it since film one,” he began. “To me, it’s a moral implication of taking responsibility for what the actors give a director — if they show their emotions, their bodies, whatever — we created a movie [and] I carry the responsibility of what they bring to the final product. No one that sits in some studio capacity and invests money should decide that, in my opinion. That’s not how art is made… [I have] a moral responsibility towards the cinematographer, maybe being away from his or her family for months on end to work on the vision that me, as a director, and all the others in the team created. To have an external power of financial interest come fuck around with that material diminishes the trust between us and the group.”
“I’m not going to shame people,” he added, “because it’s damn hard to make a film and many, many, many films are made every year where the director didn’t have final cut, and they’re wonderful films.”
Trier admitted that demanding final cut made it “tough” to get a film financed and while some U.S. producers showed immense support, Reprise was made out of Oslo, Norway and in collaboration with France. “I’ve worked in the European financing system my whole career and I’m super happy about it,” he added.
The financing system for cinema in Europe, while it has given Trier “a platform to express myself very freely,” he also believes it is constantly under political threat. “Right-wing political movements are always trying to diminish the idea of soft money support for the arts across most countries in Europe… We need support. And most art has always been supported by someone with an intention of not just making money, but supporting expression and artistic endeavors.”
Skarsgard and Fanning in ‘Sentimental Value’.
Courtesy of Neon
At the same time, Trier said the need to have total creative control over his films is something that producers should be in support of. “If you [look at] film history, a lot of the films that commercially worked have also been made by directors that are deeply involved in the script process, deeply involved in the editing and has had a sense of control — the achievements of personal expression is at the core of some of the most successful films, financially.”
Trier continued that his championing of his actors should be mirrored by financiers’ attitudes towards filmmakers. “My approach to shielding, protecting, loving, nourishing [actors] is how producers and financiers should work with directors. Don’t employ directors unless you really want to support them and love them and help them, and [same with] writers and editors… I want Renate to do well, I want her to do something wonderful and I’m proud of Renate as a director. I think financiers should feel like that with directors and the creative team.”
Across the session, Trier covered an extensive range of topics, from grieving the late David Lynch and the intersection of film and love (“tenderness is the new punk!”), to believing in the power of the “European auteur” and the cinematic universes they build. When discussing Sentimental Value, Trier, father to two young children, admitted his own fear of failure as a parent played a huge role in writing Skarsgard’s part.
“I said going in, ‘I’m really scared of failing as a father.’ And it’s very symbolic to make this film for me, because I don’t want to be Gustav,” he said. “In Norway, we have had a lot of progression [for] female directors over the last 15, 20 years, and that has been great for us male directors too, because we have gotten a focus on [a] good set culture, where the macho energy is lessened and it’s not just all tough guys.”
This has allowed filmmakers in Norway to have “private conversations” about balancing being an artist with having children, he added. “Actually, the feminist discourse around cinema has helped men also allow ourselves bigger freedom of figuring out how we make movies [as parents].”
The San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.
Joachim Lafosse’s San Sebastian-bound feature Six Days in Spring is admittedly a deeply personal project.
French actress Eye Haïdara (The Nannies, C’est la vie!) leads the Belgian director’s new film. She stars as Sana, a mother struggling to provide her 10-year-old twins (Teodor and Leonis Pinero Müller in their film debuts) with a spring vacation. When their plans collapse, she secretly takes them to a luxury villa on the French Riviera owned by her former in-laws. Over six days, joy and anxiety collide as the family hides in plain sight in what can be described as a biographical piece of filmmaking for Lafosse.
“After my parents divorced, my mother had money problems,” he confesses to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the world premiere of Six Days in Spring in competition at the Spanish film fest on Sept. 20. He’s no stranger to the festival circuit with 2012’s Our Children making a splash in Cannes and 2006’s Private Property with Isabelle Huppert debuting in Venice. It’s his sixth film to screen at San Sebastian, and perhaps his most intimate one yet.
“She had to be working a lot, to make ends meet, but she wanted us to have a vacation,” he continues about his mother’s influence on the new movie, a France-Luxembourg-Belgium co-production. With his mother and brother, Lafosse went to his grandparents’ house, but the three of them were forced to use candles for light and avoid running hot water, lest his father found out.
Six Days in Spring
Publicity
“My grandparents, they were wealthy, they had money, and suddenly my mother… she was not related to them, and [so] she didn’t have money,” Lafosse says. “A few months earlier, we were at the beautiful house and we had the right to be there. In that moment, my brother and I understood the logic of social class.” The crux of this film, he adds, is an analysis of “at what moment you stop belonging to a family.”
It almost became a cathartic outlet for the director, who was hoping for a chance to illustrate the emotional violence of divorce on screen. “If you are separated as a couple, you are still parents [and] you still have to raise those kids together and for those children to go on holidays.”
Haïdara’s tender, considered performance anchors Lafosse’s film. He considers why she was so right for the role of Sana. “I’m not a sociologist. I’m a filmmaker,” he responds. “And for me, a filmmaker is somebody who writes the characters. I know [Sana’s] story — she was living with her husband before they separated, and I was looking for an actress who was moving, who could [show us] some kind of resistance.”
On taking his personal story and setting it within a Black family, Lafosse admits there’s something political there — and the issue is not confined to his native Belgium or France. “We have to consider each story on an individual basis… but cinema is always political.” He continues: “The success, for me, is not to show what’s happened with the Black people in this area. But my [hope] is that audience and critics, they see exactly what’s happened. They recognize the situation — that more and more people are having to hide. It’s not only [happening in] the U.S.”
Lafosse hopes his new film will prompt audiences to draw their own conclusions here on Spain’s northern coast. He lauds San Sebastian’s directorial team, including fest boss José Luis Rebordinos, who spoke to THR about the fest’s eclectic lineup earlier in the week. “They feel passion, real passion for cinema,” continues Lafosse. “Here, you have the possibility to see the best movie of the year.”
Six Days in Spring premieres in competition at the 2025 San Sebastian International Film Festival, running Sept. 19-27. Watch the trailer here.
To pull off an uncomfortable dark comedy like Bad Apples, director Jonatan Etzler had one actress in mind — and luckily for him, Saoirse Ronan was game.
“We sent it to her and within a week, she responded,” the Swedish director tells The Hollywood Reporter about recruiting the Irish Oscar nominee for his English-language debut. “She was so keen on doing it because it’s not her usual character to play. She’s been playing a lot of good-hearted people. I think she was very keen on playing an unsympathetic character.”
Ronan’s unsympathetic Maria is a struggling teacher in Etzler’s first English-language feature, set to open San Sebastian Film Festival’s New Director’s strand on Friday, Sept. 19. Adapted by Jess O’Kane and based on Rasmus Andersson’s debut novel De Oönskade, Bad Apples relocates the story from Sweden to south England in this examination of how we treat society’s most vulnerable.
Burnt out and fed up with her untameable class of 10-year-olds, Maria tussles with an increasingly naughty student, Danny (played wonderfully by young newcomer Eddie Waller), and makes a rash decision to keep him captive in her basement. Nia Brown stars as Pauline, a deceptively sweet classmate of Danny’s, and Game of Thrones breakout Jacob Anderson as fellow teacher Sam.
“What it does is it poses a lot of questions and asks us to think about how we are complicit in the suffering of others,” says Swedish director Etzler, known for One More Time (2023), Swimmer (2020) and Get Ready With Me (2018). “I think it asks us about all these moral compromises that we do every day in order to to live.”
At the same time, Etzler makes sure to note, it’s also a lighthearted look at a mess of a school teacher. “It would be such a depressing film if it weren’t funny and if it didn’t have so much lightness and entertainment in how it tackles these issues,” says the filmmaker. He’s just premiered Bad Apples to a North American audience in Toronto and now comes to San Sebastian hoping to see a similarly positive response from the Europeans.
Ahead of San Sebastian, Etzler unpacks the making of Bad Apples: On recruiting Ronan, why Sweden and Britain share a sense of dark humor, and the appeal of making movies in English: “There’s such a bigger variety, and there’s lots more possibilities in what you can do.”
Let’s start with why you wanted to adapt Rasmus’ book as your English-language debut.
I was really struck when I read Rasmus’ book, particularly with the moral dilemma that’s at the center of the story: How do we deal with people who can’t fit into society? I had been a teacher, and I knew how tough it was and how vulnerable you are in front of a group of children. They can be quite good at finding your soft spots. So I felt personally connected to it, but I also felt like it was such a good premise for a film. I thought the U.K. was a good place to set it, because I think the U.K. school system is quite similar to Sweden — it has the same dysfunctions.
(L-R) Oskar Pimlott, Jonatan Etzler, and Jacob Anderson attend the TIFF premiere ‘Bad Apples’ on Sept. 7, 2025.
Dominik Magdziak/Getty Images
My agent found a producer who wanted to do the film, and he knew (screenwriter) Jess (O’Kane). I thought she was great. She did a great job adapting it to the U.K. setting. She’s had experience working as a teacher as well. The U.K. has a great tradition of dark comedies. I think there are lots of similarities in the mentality as well, between the Swedes and the Brits.
What kind of similarities?
We have a lot of the same humor. We appreciate dark humor a lot more; we appreciate when a film can make you a bit uncomfortable.
Did you always picture Saoirse for the role of Maria?
Saoirse was my top choice. We sent it to her and within a week, she responded, which was great. She really wanted to meet, and she was so keen on doing it because it’s not her usual character to play — she’s been playing a lot of good-hearted people. I think she was very keen on playing an unsympathetic character.
I talked to her about it, and I said, “Yeah, but your character in Lady Birdwas a bit unsympathetic at times.” And she said, “Yeah, in Lady Bird, she jumped out of the car. She didn’t lock up a child in her basement.” I think she was happy to do this part.
And, of course, I had watched all the great films that she’s done, so I’ve been a big fan of hers. She’s one of the greatest actors of her generation. [She’s] really funny. She has this great comedic quality and she has a sense of finding the weird behavioral mannerisms that [she] could make fun of. She made Maria feel both normal and also a bit weird.
Are we meant to have a completely unsympathetic opinion of Maria? There were times I felt some sympathy creeping in…
No, I don’t think it’s black and white at all. I think what she does is obviously unsympathetic when she locks up Danny in the basement, but I think that’s also one of the reasons I wanted Saoirse because I think the audience would sympathize with her and follow her on the journey a lot longer than with anybody else, because she is very sympathetic as a person.
And I must say I was so impressed with the acting on display from the kids — it must be tough to film with children.
It was reaally positive experience. It was really hard finding the children. There are lots of great child actors in the U.K., but it’s was to hard to someone, for Danny, who has this anger right underneath his skin. Without that quality, the film wouldn’t work. But I think they were so great and they immediately turned very professional as well. They learned all the tricks of the trade. I found it very fun. Working with child actors, it’s usually about trying to make it feel like a game and to let them be free and improvise.
I think it’s a great commentary on how we neglect our children. It’s interesting to see Danny and Pauline as both sides of the same coin, where they both feel unloved by the respective adults in their lives.
I agree with you that Danny and Pauline are really quite similar as characters, but I also think Maria is unloved by the ones she wants to be loved by. They’re a trio of people who can’t fit in, which I think [is what] the film is about, really: How do we deal with people who can’t fit into society?
It poses a lot of questions and it asks us to think about how we are complicit in the suffering of others. I think it asks us about all these moral compromises that we make every day in order to live. To me, that’s quite relevant to today. That’s how fascism takes hold, because we learn to live with these everyday compromises.
It’s interesting how everything always comes back to politics — there is also something to be said for the underfunding of British schools and the lack of help for vulnerable children. Did you shoot on location in the U.K.?
Yeah. The shoot was 32 days. We shot it in Bristol and the surrounding areas, and we also went there to do research. Me and Saoirse visited the school before the shoot. And we had teacher consultants and things like that. We had one studio build, which is the basement. It’s made by Jacqueline Abrahams who’s an amazing production designer. She has such a funny, quirky sense of detail. If you watch the film again, you can find small signs and stuff everywhere in the film. That was great fun, and also I really enjoyed shooting in the U.K. People are so professional.
This film premiered in Toronto, but it’s also heading to San Sebastian to open the New Directors’ strand. Have you been before?
I’ve never been to the San Sebastian Film Festival, so I’m really looking forward to it. I heard it’s really, really nice and [that] it’s a great city with great people and great food as well. I’m also very happy we got invited there. What I’m curious about is seeing how the European audience responds to it, now that I’ve seen a sample of the North American response.
What are you working on next?
I have a few projects in development. There’s one, I can’t tell you a lot, but it’s a surveillance thriller set in the modern digital age.
Another English-language film? Are you planning to keep making English-language films for the foreseeable future?
Yeah, I think I’m going to make more English-language films. I’m also going to make films in Sweden. Sweden is great and we’ve done lots of great films, but it’s also a very small country, so it’s quite hard to do something that’s a bit out of the box, a bit daring. And I’ve loved making films in the English language. There’s such a bigger variety, and there’s lots more possibilities in what you can do.
San Sebastian Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.
Despite not yet having wrapped a stellar 2025 — crowned by a whopping 27 projects featured at Spain’s prestigious San Sebastián Film Festival — the Catalan film industry is already looking ahead.
If this year brought major festival hits such as Carla Simón’s “Romería,” Oliver Laxe’s “Sirāt,” and Eva Libertad’s “Deaf,” 2026 seems set to usher yet another significant wave of Catalan talent. “Pacifiction” director Albert Serra is readying to premiere “Out of This World,” his English-language debut starring Riley Keough, while renowned “Jokes and Cigarettes” director David Trueba tackles his very own novel with the unconventional romantic drama “Always Winter.” Spain’s favorite animated archaeologist returns for another adventure in the fourth instalment of Enrique Gato’s “Tadeo Jones” series, and “Sirāt” star Sergi López confronts death in Sylvère Petit’s poignant “The Whale.”
While there is plenty on offer when it comes to already established directors, the new year brings with it a crop of promising young talent. Feature debuts to watch include “Iván & Hadoum,” by “Veneno” co-writer Ian de la Rosa, and “Sealskin,” by Goya-winning director Irene Moray.
Below, Variety helps you keep track of the Catalan projects to watch in 2026:
“Out of This World,” dir. Albert Serra
(Andergraun Films, Arte France Cinéma)
The English-language debut of the biting “Pacifiction” director, “Out of This World” was one of the hot titles at this year’s Cannes Film Market and might make an appearance at the Croisette in 2026. Riley Keough replaced previously attached Kristen Stewart in the project, which follows an American delegation traveling to Russia during the Ukrainian war to try finding a solution to an economic dispute. While mainly in English, the film, which is currently in post-production, will also feature Russian dialogue.
“Always Winter” (“Siempre Invierno”), dir. David Trueba
(Ikiru Films, Atresmedia Cine, La Terraza Films, Blitz La Película AIE, Wrong Men)
For the first time in his lauded career, Goya-winning Trueba (“Jokes and Cigarettes”) is adapting one of his very own novels, and one of his best, the 2015 novella “Blitz.” “Always Winter” reunites the director with David Verdaguer, who plays a 30-something architect who unexpectedly falls in love with a 60-something volunteer played by Isabelle Renauld (“Eternity and a Day”) while on a work trip to Belgium. The film is currently in post-production. Film Factory handles sales.
“Iván & Hadoum,” dir. Ian de la Rosa
(Pecado Films, Vayolet, Port au Prince, Saga Film)
The highly anticipated feature debut of one of Spain’s top emerging talents, “Iván & Hadoum” follows the titular couple of trans man Iván and Spanish-Moroccan Hadoum, who fall in love at work and go against staunch opposition from friends and family. De la Rosa co-wrote HBO Max’s hit show “Veneno.” His short “Farrucas” was nominated for a Goya Award and won a Gaudí Award, making him the first trans filmmaker to win such a prize in Spain. The film is made in collaboration with RTVE, Canal Sur, and Movistar+.
“Sealskin” (“Piel de Foca”), dir. Irene Moray
(Lastor Media, Vilaüt Films)
Winner of the Goya Award for best short film for 2019’s “Watermelon Juice,” Moray is currently in production with her magical realist feature debut, “Sealskin.” After the loss of her grandmother, cleaner Flora connects deeply with a teacher who, little by little, is becoming transparent. With the help of a sensitive gardener, Flora sets out to take care of her friend and help her get out of a toxic relationship before she disappears for good. In collaboration with Filmin and Movistar Plus+.
“Sants” dir. Mikel Gurrea
(Lastor Media, Nocturna, Vilaüt Films)
Gurrea’s short films have played major festivals such as Venice and San Sebastián. His 2022 feature debut “Suro” won the Fipresci Award at the Basque festival and earned him a Gaudí nomination for best new director. The director’s sophomore feature, currently in pre-production, tells the story of a young woman struggling to care for her dying mother, who, in desperation, decides to join a dangerous band of thieves specializing in stealing religious figures.
“Tadeo Jones 4” (“Tad the Lost Explorer 4”), dir. Enrique Gato
(Telecinco Cinema, Lightbox Animation Studios, Ikiru Films, Anangu Grup, TadeoFilms)
Lauded animation designer Gato returns with another adventure starring his three-time Goya-winning character Tadeo Stones. A Paramount project, the film will see the archaeologist enter new territory: time-travelling. When Momia becomes jealous of Tad’s two-year-old daughter Olimpia, he travels back in time to try to stop the little girl from being born. The archaeologist and his wife then chase the clock to save their beloved little girl. Currently in production, it is a question of whether or not the project might be ready for an Annecy bow in 2026.
“The Good Daughter” (“La Buena Hija”), dir. Júlia de Paz
(Avalon, Krater Films, Astra Pictures)
One of Variety’s 2021 Spanish directors to track and Berlin Talents honoree, de Paz follows her Málaga-winning debut “Ama” with a family drama that first finds young Carmela and her mother moving to her grandmother’s house following her parents’ separation. The shadow of Carmela’s father, a plastic artist she idolizes, will send the three women on a vital journey of introspection to begin building the future they deserve. With the collaboration of RTVE and Movistar+.
“The Whale” (“La Balena”), dir. Sylvère Petit
(Les Films d’Ici Méditerranée, Imagic, Iota Production)
Starring “Sirāt” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” Cesar-winner Sergi López, “The Whale” is the fiction feature debut of documentarian and photographer Petit (“Vivant parmi les vivants”). Set in a Mediterranean town in the autumn of 1985, the film begins with a dead whale washed ashore. Wine grower Corbac makes it his mission to save the skeleton from a health threat, the film exploring the man’s — and his daughter’s — connection to nature, the ocean, and life. The film is currently shooting.
“Midaq Alley” (“El Callejón de los Milagros”), the Jorge Fons 1995 gem that launched Salma Hayek’s career, is being re-released by Sony Pictures across Mexico and Latin America, thanks to an agreement between Sony Pictures International Productions and its producer, Alameda Films.
News comes after Spain’s San Sebastian Film Fest announced that it would close the festival’s Classics (Klasikoak) section.
The newly restored 4K version celebrates the 30th anniversary of the iconic film, considered one of the most consequential Mexican films of all time. It won a raft of awards worldwide and represented Mexico at the 68th Academy Awards.
Based on the novel by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, with a screenplay by Vicente Leñero, the film was produced by the legendary Alfredo Ripstein, whose Alameda Films is now run by his grandson, Daniel Birman Ripstein.
Set in a downtown Mexico City backstreet whose inhabitants’ lives are closely interwoven, the film is split into four clear parts. The first three are named after main characters, and the last one brings the story to an end. Each part begins at the same moment, showing the same game of dominoes, and covers the same time period, but from a different character’s point of view.
“Bringing ‘Midaq Alley’ back to theaters with the support of Sony is a testament to the film’s enduring impact and cultural importance,” said Birman Ripstein, adding: “This new release will allow a new generation of audiences to discover this magical film in a way it has never been seen before.” Restoring the classic to its new restored version took four years, he revealed.
“We are delighted to be a part of this once-in-a-lifetime milestone cinematic celebration,” said Philip Alexander, VP and general manager of Sony Pictures Releasing México.
Aside from being the screen debut of Salma Hayek, “Midaq Alley” features a notable ensemble cast of lauded Mexican actors that include Bruno Bichir (“Ozark”) Daniel Giménez Cacho (“Zama”), Juan Manuel Bernal (“Monarch”), Ernesto Gómez Cruz (“The Crime of Father Amaro”), María Rojo (“Valentine’s Wedding”), Tiaré Scanda (“No Man’s Land”) and Margarita Sanz (“Frida”).
The theatrical run of “Midaq Alley” is slated to kick off on Oct. 23 with Sony handling distribution across Mexico and Latin America.
György Pálfi’s “Hen” makes a movie star of an unlikely figure: the chicken. Having its world premiere in Toronto’s competitive Platform section, “Hen” sees the Hungarian director enlist a stellar cast of eight real-life chickens all taking turns as the titular character to build a moving, melancholic musing on life in a seaside village against the backdrop of Greece’s migrant crisis.
Speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s premiere, the “Taxidermia” filmmaker — whose work has played in Cannes and won major awards internationally — says the idea for the unusual film first came to him in 2019 as he was undergoing a “difficult period.” “For political reasons, I had been unable to make films in Hungary for quite some time and still am. I wanted to get away from everything and everyone. I didn’t want to give up filmmaking, I was looking for something that could be done on a small budget and explored a universal theme, and I have had a connection to chickens since childhood.”
“Hen” is almost entirely shot from the point of view of its aviary protagonist, which presented a series of logistical challenges when it came to shooting. Luckily for the director, his friend and animal trainer Árpád Halász had extensive experience with chickens, which are the first animals trainers need to deal with during their learning. Anyone who fails at handling chickens will fail their animal trainer education.
“Perhaps the most difficult part was deciding on the breed,” adds the director. “Since it was important for our story that the chickens be industrial chickens, we chose one of the most common breeds, the Leghorn. Their training began months before filming, based on the written scenes. We had to buy them even before the film got the green light. We agreed with Árpád that I would provide the chickens and he would train them.”
Logistically, the most difficult challenge in dealing with the animals was that they were not legally allowed to leave the European Union. “So instead of taking the shortest route through Serbia, they had to travel to Greece via Italy, taking a ferry,” the director explains. There was also the fact that roosters, of course, do not work after sunset, so there was a limitation in how many hours a day they could shoot.
Courtesy of TIFF
As for opting out of using CGI, AI, or any special effects to help with the chicken POV, Pálfi says it is “important to have a live connection between actors, whether they are animals or humans. The relationship with a real, living being is noticeably different; that’s what gives it credibility. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in AI. My creative curiosity is at work, and I want to try it out. I’m in the middle of an experiment right now, and it’s very exciting to work with something so new that is evolving day by day.”
Commenting on the particular cinematography for such a film, the Hungarian director praises collaborator Jogos Karvelas, who he calls “one of the most sensitive and talented Greek cinematographers.”
“We wanted to work with the chickens in the same way that actors were filmed in classic American films, somewhere below eye level,” he says. “We couldn’t dig the camera into the ground, so we used special periscope optics. It didn’t make the work any easier…”
And has Pálfi learned anything from the chickens he can employ in his filmmaking in the future? “A lot!” he says. “When tension arose on set, the hens always reacted very sensitively, and it was impossible to work with them. But when the energy flowed well, they did everything perfectly. I have never experienced so tangibly how powerful it is when a team can really work as a team, putting aside personal differences for a common goal.”
But “Hen” is, at its core, about much more than the life of a singular chicken, with Pálfi observing the intricate politics of not only the family living around the hen but also how great sociopolitical changes have affected their lives — most noticeably since some of the family members have begun smuggling immigrants through the sea. “Beyond the unquenchable inner necessity of creation, this film is also about individual responsibility and whether our own lives can be separated from the events around us,” says the director.
“If the viewer is willing to come with me, then in this film we play with allowing ourselves to see the world from a different perspective for the sake of a thought experiment,” he adds. “And the next step is to ask the question: what if we only see as much of the whole picture as this chicken sees of the human world? Are we more than a chicken in the box?”
“Hen” is produced by Pallas Film, View Master Films and Twenty Twenty Vision in co-production with Focusfox and ZDF/ARTE. Lucky Number handles world sales.
The British star has done it all: shooting webs, making musicals — you name it. Over the last few years, however, he’s felt it right to take a break from the spotlight. Now, with We Live in Timeset to close the San Sebastian Film Festival on Saturday, the Oscar nominee makes his grand return to the screen.
Garfield has dabbled in recent years with, for example, TV miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven in 2022. And who could forget his iconic appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home?
This year, the star confirms to The Hollywood Reporter that he is ready to make a comeback. “I feel looser, I feel less precious, I feel more joyful,” the 41-year-old says. He has been surfing and eating his way around the Spanish coastal town over the last week, spending time with old high-school friends: “I’ve been a proper tourist.”
On Saturday, he won’t be a tourist. He’ll be on the red carpet with hundreds of cameras pointed at him, Florence Pugh on his arm. The two lead John Crowley’s We Live in Time, a south London-set romantic drama about an up-and-coming chef and a recent divorcée who fall in love. As they meander their way through life — and even welcome a child — they learn to cherish their time together when a late-stage cancer diagnosis rocks the happy home they’ve built.
The film is penned by Nick Payne, who Garfield admits was a big draw for him boarding the project. The actor found the “Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis vibrational archetype” of the movie rather charming. It also, he says, has been something of a healing experience after losing his own mother to cancer in 2019. “Every species of every living thing on this earth has lost a mother. Young dinosaurs were losing their mothers,” he says. “So in terms of my own personal experience, yeah, it felt like a very simple act of healing for myself, and hopefully healing for an audience.”
It isn’t the only feature Garfield’s been working on. The Magic Faraway Tree, with Claire Foy and Nicola Coughlan, is on his schedule, and Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt, alongside Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri, is also set to mark a huge moment in his career.
Garfield spoke to THR about why it felt like the right time to come back into the film fold with We Live in Time, what audiences might be surprised to know about his co-star Pugh and the 28 — yes, twenty-eight — actors he named when asked who he would love to work with next: “I did a screen test with Ryan Gosling 20 years ago and ever since then, I wanted to do something with him. He’s very inspiring to me.”
What came first with We Live in Time? Was it Nick’s script? Was it John, or Florence?
It was all very, very hot on the heels of each other. I guess it was John first, in a way, because John was the the script bearer and I wanted to work with John again, since Boy A (2007), for a long time. And then when I saw it was Nick Payne as the writer of the script, that was an immediate, exciting prospect. I love his writing. I think he writes so sensitively and full of humor and heart, an amazing balance of things. I think it’s a hard needle to thread. And then it was me reading that with John’s directing in mind, and going, “Oh yeah, this could really be something quite beautiful.”
And then it was Florence, which was kind of a vital ingredient. Any two actors that did Constellations (2012) for Nick or this film, it would require a certain courage. Obviously Florence is just very inherently right for the part. It requires a level of depth, a level of rawness, vulnerability, and, I don’t know, a lightness of touch — but also an ability to go to the depths of the soul of the character. And very few actors can do that.
So it was all of those things, which kind of annoyingly brought me out of my sabbatical that I was taking but in fact, I’m realizing as I speak about it 1727545989, it felt very much part of my little break I was taking. It felt like I could continue the sabbatical while making the film. So this was just a wonderfully timed thing where I read the script and was like, “Oh, this is the inside of my heart right now.” And what a gift to be able to actually put all that to good use and create out of it.
Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in ‘We Live in Time’.
Courtesy of TIFF
Why did this rom-com-drama feel like the right moment in your career to re-enter the spotlight?
I wasn’t looking for a romantic drama. I wasn’t really looking for anything and it just kind of arrived. It was just the right themes, the right expression of where I am at, personally, being kind of midlife at 41. Whenever I say that to people, they’re like, ‘No! It’s not midlife.’ But I think that’s just death denialism. I’d be lucky if I lived to 80. I’d be so grateful to live that long. So I feel this moment of standing in the middle of my life — looking back, looking forward, looking at where I am — and trying to identify and feel what actually matters, where I want to be, how I want to be, where I want to put my diminishing time and energy. To make sure I can get to the end of my life and say, “Well, I did my best with what I was given.”
It just happened to be a romantic drama. And of course, a romantic drama is going to have life and death and love and risk-taking and courage and terror and mortality and dread and joy and exuberance and longing. This film is so full of longing. I watched it with an audience for the first time in Toronto [at the film fesitval], and it was a few quiet moments that really struck me about it quite beautifully and profoundly. It was like, “Oh, these are just two people that want to live.” It’s very simple. They want to live. They’re not asking for a lot. They’re not asking for the most extraordinary life. They’re not asking for anything unreasonable. They are simply asking, like all of us, to survive and to be here and to be able to be together while being here and try to make meaning out of their lives. That’s all I think any of us can can hope to ask for.
Are you firmly out of your sabbatical now?
[Laughs.] I think so. Yeah, I think I’m excited to work again in a different way. I feel looser, I feel less precious. I feel more joyful. I feel more aware. I feel established enough as a person in the world, as an actor within myself and within the world. I know myself well enough now to feel more enjoyment… I’m still a headcase — when I’m on a set, I’m like a dog with a bone and get taken over by some weird spirit that is never satisfied — but that’s never going to change, and I don’t want it to, but within that, I can feel a lot more pleasure and a lot more enjoyment, play and freedom.
I know that you and Florence have both spoken quite candidly about this film and how it ties quite intimately to your own experiences of grief and cancer. I don’t know if you’d be comfortable talking about why it was important to portray this on the big screen.
Thank you for asking sensitively. I appreciate that. Yeah, I’m not special in that regard. It’s garden variety in a way. And in my processing of my grief, one of the most healing and reassuring, soothing moments I’ve had, is realizing that this has been the way it’s been since time immemorial. Sons have been losing their mothers, daughters have been losing their mothers [since the beginning of time]. We’re lucky if it’s that way around, rather than the other. And of course, countless parents lose their children in one way or another too, I can’t even imagine what that must feel like. But I don’t have to imagine what the other way feels like. And it’s so wonderful to know how how ordinary the experience is in terms of how universal it is, while it is still so very, very truly, uniquely extraordinary to the individual.
So there’s something beautiful [about it]. There’s just lots of grace. And maybe I seek grace out. I don’t know. I naturally tend to. The only way to true joy, actually, is through terrible loss and acceptance of reality as it is, not as we think it should be. There’s so many moments, of course, that I’ve had in the last five years of saying, “Well, she shouldn’t have died. My mother shouldn’t have died so young, and she shouldn’t have died in suffering, and she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t.” It’s so arrogant of me. It’s so egotistical of me when I’m in those moments. And it’s human. I’m not shaming myself for it. It’s a human response, because it it doesn’t make sense, it feels unjust, it feels unfair. And then you take all those troubles to the ocean or the moon or the woods. And I believe that the moon, the ocean and the woods would all say the same thing, which is, “Yeah, I get it, dude.” Every species of every living thing on this earth has lost a mother. Young dinosaurs were losing their mothers. So in terms of my own personal experience, yeah, it felt like a very simple act of healing for myself, and hopefully healing for an audience.
Is that something that you want audiences to feel, coming away from watching We Live in Time?
I know it’s saying the most obvious thing, but when we go to a concert altogether or when we go to the theater, something about the collective experience helps us to feel less alone in our pain and less alone in our joys and less alone in our lives generally. So it felt like, “Oh no, this is part of what I’m on this earth to do. I love working with a group of people on something that matters. I love working with a group of people where we all get to bring our own woundedness to it and our own fragility to it, and see each other in our fragility and our woundedness, and say: “Me too.” Healing collectively is a privilege.
I don’t get to comment on how people respond, or how I want them to respond. I guess what I would want is for them to come in open hearted. Because I think we, as a culture, have been conditioned and led towards a more calcified, hardened state. And it makes sense, because the world is so divided and uncertain and full of trepidation and fear right now, and violence and ugliness. And we have such access to it at the drop of a hat. Right? We’re all terrified of being open hearted. We’re all terrified of saying the wrong thing. We’re all terrified of feeling the wrong thing, thinking the wrong thing, being inherently wrong in some way. But I think people that come and see this will, on some level, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, want that calcification to be cracked open.
I also want to talk about the Britishness of this film.
Very British, yeah. In the sex, in the food…
It feels very Richard Curtis. Can you speak to being on a London set and acting with a fellow Brit?
It was joyful. I haven’t had a chance to do it very often. Just being able to stay at my house is so nice and Florence being able to go for a run around Battersea before work. It’s heavenly. All these liminal spaces of locations that we were shooting on — petrol stations, NHS hospital waiting areas. You know, turnpikes, A-roads, traffic jams — like heaven. It’s the text we live in every day. To be able to honor that, and to live in that as these characters was really, really joyful. And the snacks, the Celebrations, the Jaffa Cakes and the digestives and the tea in the bath. To be able to lean into that Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis as you say, vibration archetype was just … yeah. And one of my favorite of his films is About Time with Domhnall [Gleeson] and Rachel [McAdams]. That film holds a very special place in my heart for multiple reasons. So when this came along, I was like, it’s About Time, but maybe a little more dramatic. They’re kind of related in some way.
Do you have a favourite pub in Herne Hill?
[Laughs.] Herne Hill is not my hood.
What is your hood?
I’m not revealing that! It’s northwest London.
Do you have any recommendations there?
There’s The Stag [pub] which is great, by Hampstead train station. Primrose Hill has the best bagel shop in London right now — It’s Bagels.
I’ve been. It’s really good.
It’s a little hyped up right now, but it lives up to the hype. It’s really good. Like, I have their merch and everything. I really, really love bagels.
Before we digress further, let’s talk about Florence. Had you met her before this project? What was it like building a rapport that so effortlessly translates into onscreen chemistry?
We had never met. I had been a long admirer of her work, since Lady Macbeth (2016). When John and I were talking about ideas for Almut [Pugh’s character] — because I came on first — Florence was top of the list. I’d been wanting to work with her for a long time, and it turned out she had also wanted to work with me, and it was fortuitous that our schedules matched up. And she was dying to make a film like this as well.
But obviously starting out with a mutual respect for each other as actors was good. But then there’s a whole big question mark of: are we going to enjoy each other’s company? Are we going to even like each other? Are we going to dislike each other? Are we going to find each other problematic in any way? With a script like this, we have to travel to the most intimate places. At one point, I have to have my head right by her backside while she’s on all fours in a petrol station, naked. That’s scary for anyone to do, let alone the woman in that scenario. And that’s just one example of the kind of the intimacy that we would have to feel safe going to with each other. And it wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t feel safe.
It was very, very easy to do that with Florence, and I think she would say the same with me. I’m so grateful for that, because I don’t think we would have a film that works without that.
Florence Pugh, Andrew Garfield
Is there anything that surprised you about Florence, or can you share some sort of insight into her inner workings that maybe people wouldn’t know?
Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, a surprise I’m not sure, because I didn’t have any expectations. I was very, very pleasantly, like, grateful about how much of a professional she is in terms of the basic stuff — a lot of people don’t see as the basic stuff, like being on time, being ready, being prepared.
She’s someone who wants everyone to feel included. Whether you’re on set with the crew or on a night out or at a dinner party, she wants everyone to feel like they’re part of the gang. She doesn’t want anyone to feel left out. She’s very, very aware of people’s feelings around a table. And I think that was something that I found really touching and moving about her. And she really, really cares about the work. She really, really is devoted to her work as an actor.
You’ve done so much in your career. You’ve done the period pieces, you’ve done the rom-coms, you’ve done Spider-Man, the superhero stuff. You’ve done a biopic with Tick, Tick… Boom! I know you have The Magic Faraway Tree coming up and After the Hunt with Luca Guadagnino. What can you tell us about what’s on the horizon?
I’d like to get back to the kind of origins of making home movies with my dad, or making home movies with my high school friends, who were just in San Sebastian with me. We were reminiscing about the [fact] we had a production company called Budget Productions, which is “budget” but in a French pronunciation, like boo-shay. And, led by our friends Ben and David Morris, we would make genre films. Like we would just do handy cam, stop and start editing, in-camera, James Bond rip-offs when we were very drunk and very high, when we were 15 or 16. In between skateboarding sessions.
So it’s coming back a little bit to to that first impulse of like, we’re playing and we’re making something that is just joyful and fun. I was able to bring that to Tick, Tick… Boom! for sure. And then these last two [The Magic Faraway Tree and After the Hunt], even though they’re very, very different tonally and process-wise — one’s a big, sweet family fantasy film, and the other is a very serious, grown-up drama — it was still very, very playful. Luca is a very playful director. Luca’s like pure imagination and freedom. His creativity is this free, radical, sublime thing. And then Ben Gregor, our director on Faraway Tree, and everyone involved in that process, including Simon Farnaby, the writer, and all the actors, it was just this very playful experience. I’m really excited about both of them being in the world. I feel reinvigorated towards that feeling of putting on plays with my cousins and our best friends for our families over Christmas time or whatever. That’s what it feels like again.
I want to see a Budget Production.
[Laughs.] Let me see if I can… I don’t know. They’re definitely out there. I don’t know whether they’re suitable for public consumption.
It’s great to hear that it was fun working with Luca. Have you seen Queer?
He’s been trying to get me in for a screening. He’s only shown me one blowjob scene, which I thought was so genuinely beautiful, like it was such a beautiful love scene between Daniel [Craig] and Drew [Starkey] and it’s just so tender and full of longing. And obviously, graphic in certain ways. But I just thought, “Oh, I’m gonna love this film.” He’s such a sensualist and a humanist and in touch with his own longing.
Is there a genre of film or TV Show that you haven’t done that really appeals to you?
I’m considering all these things right now. I would love to make a film or a show or something that has the feeling of the stuff that I was brought up on, like ’90s, early 2000s. Amblin Entertainment, adventure, swashbuckling, Indiana Jones-style. Humorous, dramatic, romantic — a big crowd-pleasing epic adventure. That would be really, really fun to do. I was [also] thinking about great like films of Fatal Attraction, Unfaithful, Adrian Lyne. Like an erotic thriller.
Like Queer?
Kind of like Queer. Or Babygirl. But from what I understand young people want less sex on their screens! It probably makes sense because they’ve been exposed to so much insane, graphic pornography, accessible at the click of a switch that they’re like: “No more.” So eroticism has been killed somehow, because of the overtaking of pornography. Anyway, I don’t know. I want to go do theater again, do something on stage again. I don’t know. I’m very, very grateful. I also want to help. I think maybe the focus is more as well towards helping others get to where they want to get to. I don’t know what that looks like exactly, but I feel like I’m in a position that I can be a mentor to other actors and filmmakers and assist in that way. That feels like a good way to spend my time. It’s all up for grabs. Midlife is not so bad.
Midlife sounds great. Okay, who would you love to work with or act alongside next?
My God. Where do I begin? Jesus Christ. Older generation actors like Meryl [Streep]. I’ve been in a film with Meryl, but I’ve never worked with Meryl. Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis, if he ever decides to work again. Robert Duval, Gene Hackman. I got the opportunity to work with Robert Redford and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Vincent D’Onofrio, Linda Emond, Sally Field. These are the people that I feel are the custodians of that deep dive of acting. There are other people, of course, in my generation and younger. I just saw Colman Domingo in Sing Sing — one of my favorite films of all time at this point.
I got to work with Zendaya [in Spider-Man: No Way Home], who is just wonderful. I would love to work with her again. I want to work with my friends. I’ve never worked with Eddie Redmayne or Charlie Cox or Tom Sturridge. Cillian [Murphy]. I did a screen test with Cillian once and Ben Whishaw, which was very exciting. There are certain people in the younger generation that I find really exciting as well. Obviously, Timothee Chalamet is just incredible. And Austin Butler is great. I’d love to work again with my friend Laura Dern. It’s really, really endless. I was so happy to get to work briefly with Ayo [Edebiri in After the Hunt], who I love, and got to do some real work with Julia [Roberts], which was a heavenly thing.
And Tom Hanks. That’s part of my dream as well. I would love to work with Will Ferrell, who I got to meet recently. Steve Carell. Ryan Gosling I would love to work with. I did a screen test with Ryan 20 years ago and ever since then, I wanted to do something with him. He’s very inspiring to me.
And how is it closing San Sebastian with We Live in Time?
It’s such a gorgeous festival, and it’s such a nice time. I came out at the beginning of the festival and, because I had a break, I brought two friends out from high school. I had always wanted to come and eat here and surf, so that’s what I did. I came out early and I ate and I surfed, and I was hanging with my old buddies, and we were just rambling around and cycling about and and eating our way through this city and drinking a little bit too. It was really, really beautiful. I managed to see three films. I saw Anora and and I saw Hard Truths which was incredible. I’ve really enjoyed being here with the backdrop of the festival. It’s a beautiful city, and I got to go to Bilbao yesterday, to the Guggenheim — holy shit. So I’ve been a proper tourist. I love being a tourist. I love a city break and and just walking, getting lost and finding the nooks and crannies of a place. So yeah, it’s been a beautiful time, and the reception from people has been really lovely. I’m excited to see how people respond to the film tomorrow.
A super quick question to end on. Did you know your TikTok fans absolutely love that scene from The Social Network? Where you smash the laptop and say: “Sorry, my Prada’s at the cleaners! Along with my hoodie and my fuck you flip-flops, you pretentious douchebag.”
[Laughs] It’s passion. It’s justice. I guess people on TikTok like justice, and they like outraged, righteous indignation and someone searching for justice — where Eduardo Saverin is in that moment. And I think they probably subliminally like seeing technology being smashed too.
We Live in Time closes the San Sebastian Film Festival on Sept. 28 and releases in U.S. theaters on Oct. 11.
Johnny Depp has had, it’s fair to say, a rocky few years in Hollywood.
After a public divorce and subsequent defamation trial involving ex-wife Amber Heard — claims of domestic violence and extensive abuse erupting from both parties — he is dipping a toe back in the film waters with Modi — Three Days on the Wing of Madness.
Depp’s second directorial feature, Modi follows a few days in the life of Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. Riccardo Scamarcio stars in the titular role alongside Antonia Desplat, Al Pacino and Stephen Graham. Backdropped by Paris in the middle of World War II, the film focuses on the painter and sculptor as he grapples with his artistic freedom, pride and class-based snobbery while searching for recognition.
It was, Depp revealed at the movie’s press conference Tuesday, Al Pacino who urged the actor — or in this case, director — to take it on. “When Pacino speaks, you must listen,” the Pirates of the Caribbean star told the room of reporters at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
The film is receiving its world premiere on the Spanish coast with Depp and his cast putting on a united front. “Let’s celebrate Johnny and this movie,” Scamarcio tells The Hollywood Reporter. His co-star, Antonia Desplat, adds: “People need to move on.”
Depp likened his bumpy life to Modigliani’s at the press conference. “I’m sure we can say that I’ve been through a number of things here and there. Maybe yours didn’t turn into a soap opera,” he said, referencing the trial. “I mean, literally, televised.”
His cast are nothing but complimentary — and that’s an understatement. They describe him as full of love and “a fatherly figure,” who has “heart and trust.” Below, Scamarcio and Desplat speak candidly about what it is to be on a Depp set, while the film’s supporting cast — Bruno Gouery, Luisa Ranieri, and Ryan McParland — weigh in too. “He’s the nicest, the kindness, the sweetest man I’ve ever worked with in my life,” Scamarcio says. “The industry, I think, should be very careful.”
Congratulations on this film and being here in San Sebastian. Can I start by asking what drew you to this project?
ANTONIA DESPLAT I was sent the script to be considered for Beatrice’s part [Beatrice Hastings, a British poet and literary critic, was Modigliani’s partner for two years], and when I read the script, I hadn’t read a script that felt so uncensored in forever. And it felt like a very intriguing woman. I was also very knowledgeable on Modigliani because I grew up in Montparnasse, and I was very close to that world. And the fact that Johnny Depp was directing, the fact that Mr. Scamarcio was the lead, it felt incredibly exciting. So I taped because I was like, “They need to see how much I want this part.” And then I had a Zoom with Johnny, waited for two weeks, had a screen test, and then had another Zoom where he announced that I got the part. It felt like a huge moment.
RYAN MCPARLAND It was an incredible opportunity, I think, to play something so far removed from me and my existence growing up in Ireland, and I thought it would really challenge me as well. And of course, the opportunity to work with Johnny Depp and be in a film with Al Pacino, these guys I looked up to as a kid.
BRUNO GOUERY Being directed by Johnny Depp with this fantastic cast, it was such a great opportunity. I have to say that [playing] Maurice Utrillo, a French painter very famous in Paris, for me, obviously it resonates a lot. I love paintings, I love art.
LUISA RANIERI Johnny and Al Pacino, even if we don’t have a scene together, it’s a big honor to be in this insane movie with all the actors attached. Riccardo, too, we’ve known each other for several years, but we’ve never worked together.
Johnny Depp on the set of ‘Modi.’
‘Modi’/DDA
RICCARDO SCAMARCIO It was a crazy thing because I had this Zoom call with Johnny and I was driving on the highway, so I had to stop. It was 9, 10 o’clock at night, and so the first meeting I had with Johnny was at a gas station. And while we were having this conversation, he realized that there was something strange behind me, like oil for cars… And he said, “Where are you?” and I say, “I’m at the gas station, I’m sorry Johnny, but I was driving down with my daughter, it was a little bit difficult…” and someone else was there, I think Stephen [Graham] or one of the producers and he said: “That’s our man.” [Laughs.] So we met, then we saw each other in London. But for me, Modigliani is very important because my mother, she’s a painter. So I grew up with this big book on Modigliani and my mother told me, because I was very, very young, that I was obsessed with this book. I still have it, with broken pages. I knew I had to be a part of this incredible project.
That’s almost like fate, you having that book.
SCAMARCIO It was exactly that. It’s very strange. And I always grew up thinking that I wanted to buy a Modigliani one day. Impossible, because the last one to sell, five months ago, sold for $170 million.
DESPLAT It’s amazing, because we both have these… in French, we say underground rivers, which is when things are meant to be. I lived at 54 Rue de Montpernasse, which was [Romanian sculptor Constantin] Brâncuși’s and [French-American sculptor Jacques] Lipschitz’s studio. Modigliani wrote a postcard to Brâncuși to our address and we have a copy of it. We’ve had that in our house my whole life. And then Beatrice, it varies in certain books, but she either lived at 53 or 55 Rue de Montpernasse, and I was at 54.
So it’s safe to say working with Johnny Depp was a huge pull for youall on this?
SCAMARCIO It is very, very safe to say.
DESPLAT He’s the best actor of our century.
SCARMARCIO He has heart and trust, which is, I think, the most important things for an actor. They need to feel this trust from the director. It’s critical. And it’s very strange because [Depp] puts you in a position where you feel free to deliver whatever you want but then he drives you with very smart and precise indications. It’s fantastic, because you feel free, but safe.
DESPLAT Also, Johnny is a definition of an artist. He’s a painter, he’s a musician, he’s an actor, he’s a director. And like [Scamarcio] said, he has a heart, which brings sensitivity and he refuses to be boxed. He refuses to go into the conformity of things, so he’s fully uncensored. Being directed by someone who’s just doesn’t — excuse my French — give a shit about other people’s opinion, and who’s just going to do things for the art and for the love of it and the passion of it, is just completely enthralling.
Was it peculiar reconciling Johnny Depp the actor with Johnny Depp the director?
DESPLAT I first had 10 minutes where I needed to get my fandom out in our first Zoom meeting, and tell him how much I admire him. He calls me kiddo, and he just felt like a very fatherly figure that was going to guide us very gently and carefully into the world. But I think each character Johnny has played has a part of him. He does imitations of characters and people all the time, and so you see all these different characters that he’s played over the years come alive as he’s directing us and demonstrates what he wants, sometimes just when he’s speaking about it, because he gets passionate. So I think the director and the actor just merged into one thing.
McParland, Scamarcio, Ranieri, and Gouery in ‘Modi’.
Modi Production Ltd
Do you have any tidbits or memories from set that would give audiences insight into Johnny Depp as a director?
DESPLAT [Laughs.] There’s a scene in the cemetery that is the definition of how he allows things to happen.
SCAMARCIO When we are running and we just went crazy, and in one take, which is the one in the movie, [Antonia] falls — and she was never supposed to end up on the floor. Instead of stopping the scene, I go and say, “Are you okay?,” we kept going, and it was fantastic. And Johnny, he loved it.
DESPLAT He calls it “movie magic.”
SCAMARCIO That’s what he’s looking for: accidents.
DESPLAT And of course, we had the whole crew and Johnny was going [whispering]: “Is she okay? Is she okay? Is she okay? Can we keep going?” Obviously we didn’t hear that, but we heard about it later on. And he came out and was like, “This is movie magic!”
GOURERY I have to say that I don’t work with many directors who give me the possibility to show my fantasies and give me such confidence.
MCPARLAND It was deeply collaborative. He really, really encouraged us to take risks with the work and with the performances.
Alot of people will view this as as Johnny’s big return, in lots of ways, to Hollywood after some instability these last few years. Do you think that he deserves a second chance?
DESPLAT Yeah. People need to move on.
SCAMARCIO Second chance? Why? I think Hollywood needs Johnny Depp, an artist of that kind. It’s very important for Hollywood and for cinema in general. And yeah, it’s a very controversial thing but at the end of this process, can you imagine how such a big sufferance there is behind these things? When you feel attacked by a world, why? And actually, you’re a good man. He’s the nicest, the kindest, the sweetest man I’ve ever worked with in my life. The industry, I think, should be very careful, because artists are very, very fragile. It’s not easy to just arrive. Of course, there are privileges, but at the same time, it’s a difficult job.
DESPLAT And he’s a human being.
SCAMARCIO Yeah, we need humanity. That’s what we need. So let’s celebrate Johnny and this movie, which is about another artist that, let’s not forget, died with no money, was terribly sick. [Modigliani] was punched by the police the day before he died, which increases sickness, and five months ago, his painting has been sold for $170 million. Shall we learn something from those things? I think we should. We should be careful. I’ve done another movie about another painter called Caravaggio, who has been canceled for years by the church and is from the 1600s. So this cancel culture, it’s something that comes from a very long time ago.
DESPLAT Exactly.
MCPARLAND I think whatever Johnny decides to do with the rest of his career, his life, is up to him. I personally can only speak about my experience working with him and getting to know him. He’s an incredibly kind, down to earth, humble, extremely humble human being. He looked after us and protected us and took care of us. The work was always most important. There was nothing else going on. To have the freedom to explore and to experiment and to improvise, it could be one of the greatest acting experiences I may ever have the pleasure of being part of.
Riccardo, Antonia — had you two met before you worked on Modi? Because you were such a convincing couple. Your chemistry was amazing.
SCAMARCIO We just met in Budapest, a week before we started shooting. [It’s good] you believe in us as a couple.
DESPLAT I think we bounce off each other very well. And I think Johnny created a very safe playground for us too, and he was very collaborative.
SCAMARCIO And she speaks a perfect Italian.
DESPLAT It was a very collaborative process, and I think Johnny allowed us to take part in rewriting the scenes with him so that they felt more truthful to each of our characters, to bring in ideas and research that we had done. So it felt like a very collaborative effort and we just had fun doing it.
Antonia Desplat as Beatrice in ‘Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness.’
This is a film about art, about pride, about snobbery. What else is Modi honoring, what is its message?
SCAMARCIO Well, for me, the most important thing is that this movie established that it is very important to be an artist, but also to be a man. I would say, beyond that, for an artist, there is something that can’t be for sale. A private dimension of you, your soul. It’s very important to create and if you sell that… you will be contaminated forever. So there is this message that no matter how powerful you are, how much money you have, there is the reason we do this job.
DESPLAT I think for me, we should take away from the film the freedom that those characters have, because we live in a world where art is censored all the time. But art is supposed to be provocative, it’s supposed to be exciting. And I think if we start controlling art, we just lose the soul, we lose the freedom of it. And I think with this film, because it’s not a biopic, we’re just sort of zooming in on three days of an artist, you get to experience and witness the freedom that these characters had. They were all revolutionaries, these four characters, and they were artists struggling to be recognized, which I think speaks to everybody nowadays too, but it’s taking away the freedom of art. Art needs to be free. Otherwise it can’t exist.
GOUERY It’s all about, I think, the freedom of creation. It’s unbelievable for me to think that those painters at the beginning…. They never sell the paintings! And they’re continuing all the same. It’s very strange. I don’t know. If I, as an actor, if no one casted me, I think I would change [careers].
MCPARLAND Yeah, perseverance.
Johnny isn’t the only big name you worked with on this film. You all got to work with Al Pacino. Can you speak a little bit about about that experience?
DESPLAT Can I just say how great the scene is?
SCAMARCIO We went to Los Angeles to shoot that scene, and Johnny wanted to rewrite the scene. And so we had two days to shoot the scene, but actually one day he was rewriting so me and Al were chilling out, home alone. “Okay, well, we’re not gonna work today.” So basically [Depp] rewrote the scene completely. And the second day, like an hour from when we were supposed to start shooting, I’ve received this brand new scene, completely new, which from 15 pages became 27 and the page 28 was: “More dialogue to come…” I said, “This is a joke.” [Laughs.] I’m not English, not American, I’m 100 percent Italian, so English is not my language, but I said to myself: “If Johnny thinks that I can make it… He’s not worried. Well, I’m gonna make it.” I learned this scene in one hour, and it was wonderful. It was incredible. Al is such a generous and incredible man, very humble, very sweet with me, he helped me a lot. So it’s an honor, of course. I’ve been very lucky to be protected by these two incredible human beings and immense artists.
DESPLAT He’s just the sweetest man alive, he’s not at all pretentious. You know, sometimes, when you meet your idols, there can be a time where you’re disappointed. But he was so sweet. He just wanted ice cream.
GOUERY I tell you the truth, when I saw the scene [with Pacino], it was better than what I imagined.
Are you excited to be here in San Sebastian for the festival?
SCAMARCIO [Claps hands excitedly.]
RANIEIRI It’s so welcoming, so beautiful to be here. It was incredible arriving. All the world came out to say hello.
DESPLAT This festival feels very authentic. It feels like it’s about the actual films, whereas I think sometimes you can get lost in all the glitz of other festivals. To show the movie, this is the best place to appreciate the art of filmmaking. So it’s very exciting!
This year, 22 Catalan productions have been selected for the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival, highlighting just how much the region’s film industry is booming.
Among them is Mamífera, directed by Liliana Torres. The Barcelona-born filmmaker wanted to tackle the subject of “non-maternity” — a woman’s decision not to have children — in response to a stigma she has felt personally.
Torres’ project, screening in San Sebastian this week, follows Lola (played by Maria Rodríguez Soto) and Bruno (Enric Auquer), two 40-something-year-olds in a happy relationship. As Lola watches her friends and family obsess over either their own children or having children, she is shocked to find herself pregnant and unhappy about it. Everyone around her is so connected to the experience of motherhood, Lola grapples with the idea that something is wrong with her.
The film offers a poignant commentary on the societal pressure placed on women to surrender to what Torres says is falsely described as “instinct.” The movie is also a celebration of Catalan as a language and Catalonia as a region — the Catalan government is, after all, year-on-year investing more money in film and television, with an estimated budget of around €50 million ($54.5 million) in 2024.
Torres spoke to The Hollywood Reporter on the Spanish coast about addressing “non-maternity” and why Catalan film is currently at its best — especially for female filmmakers.
Congratulations on such a thought-provoking film. How did Mamífera come to be, and why did you want to make a movie on this subject?
For me, it was an ongoing subject. Since I was a child, I already knew I didn’t want to have children. So when I was my 20s, most people were telling me, “Oh, no, that’s not what you think, it’s because you’re so young.” And then when I was in my 40s, people were telling me: “You will regret it.” So it’s a subject that has accompanied me for my whole life, and Mamífera is for me, a way to create a little bit of justice. Because all my references of women who didn’t want to be a mother used to be secondary characters, very stereotypical, very cliché, the typical woman who lives alone and doesn’t like children or the woman who has a very high-status work, so she has no time — but she’s doing such a great job that we forgive them. And that wasn’t real to me. It’s like, I have to have a reason to not want to be a mother. Why do I have to have a reason? I don’t. That’s my reason. And if I want to do something very superficial, trivial, with my life, I’m allowed to! That was the main reason for me making this movie, because I think we were lacking that reflection for us, to unstigmatize these women.
And this stigma, is it something that you think is specific to Spain?
No. For me, it’s global. It transcends every country. It has to do with the traditional point of view, over women — the patriarchy which puts motherhood in the center of our lives, as if that’s what makes our lives worth it. The other options seem futile for the patriarchy. You know, what is a woman without children meant to do with her life? It seems to be the question: what is she planning to do? It’s suspicious somehow, and it also pulls us outside from domesticity for a long time. We don’t have to be raising children, which normally takes women away from their professions.
This word, “non-maternity,” that is used to describe the film’s plot, I’ve not seen it before.
We have so many terms regarding not having children. Child-free sounds to me like if I was a slave of a child and childless sounds like I’m lacking something. There is also a technical, biological term in Catalonia for that, but we don’t use it very much in the conversation. It means “never put an egg.” But for me, non-maternity [is suitable].
There’s a few elements in Mamífera I want to ask about. Lola sees her friends who so desperately want kids — or already have them — and sees something wrong with her own mind and body.So this pressure comes from there, too.
I still think it has to do with the patriarchy, and specifically in the way that they have taught us for a long time that motherhood is an instinct. So you think, if motherhood is an instinct, what is wrong with me? Biologically, there has to be something wrong with me. That was a question that came up for me for a long time before I started studying. And I went through many books, and [French philosopher and feminist] Simone de Beauvoir helped me a lot with this idea of motherhood. I read a lot of books that said motherhood wasn’t an instinct, it was just a social construction.
Even if you’re a mother, it’s your decision.
And I want to ask about the support Lola gets from her partner, Bruno. She acknowledges that becoming a parent can be a lot easierfor men. Or at least an easier decision. So was writing Bruno as supportive as he was important?
I wanted to have a couple that [was] really in love. They have been in a relationship for a long time, they have discussed not having children. And for me, the idea to have a supportive partner was very important. Because on one hand, I wanted to say that you can get on very well with your partner and have a beautiful relationship, but that doesn’t make you desire children. And even if that desires arose, like in Mamífera, there is a reason. And even Bruno is very progressive and is never imposing his desire, always asking and also offering: “I change my work” and everything. Still, there is something physical to motherhood that you cannot escape. So even if he offers all of that, Lola knows that she will have to quit a lot of people in her life that she really likes, and that’s a fact that you cannot escape.
Maria and Enric put in fantastic performances. Great chemistry and I so believed them as a couple. You must have been very pleased with how it turned out.
They are very good friends in real life, so that helped us a lot. And they are very good actors. I was so grateful. Both are really professional and they really had a lot of fun while rehearsing and reading the script and talking about the topic. Also, they are very different. For example, Maria got into Lola very fast with the humor and irony and also being caring but very assertive. For Enric, he was very used to playing men from a male perspective. There were many times he would start talking with Lola from a point of testosterone, like arguing. And she would say, “No, no, no, you’re not discussing, you’re just talking at her.” And he was like, “Okay. I get it. We can talk about this.” He was learning something from Bruno’s character.
I want to ask about filming in Catalan, representing Catalonia and where Catalonian film’s place is in the industry?
Catalan productions are going really well, most of all, in terms of authorship. We have a lot of women who are writing. So you have [Barcelona native filmmaker] Carla Simón, who won at the Berlin Film Festival last year.
We have a lot of names and writers that are going international, out of Spain, and winning prizes and position in Catalan, which for us is very important, because keeping the language, keeping the culture, it gets tricky sometimes. Because you have to dub the movies so they will release in many Spanish cinemas. That is something that really sucks. Because it should be easier. We are in Spain, we should have subtitles.
Why do they insist on dubbing?
I think it is because exhibitors are always afraid to put a movie with subtitles in Spain, because people will automatically discard a movie because they’re lazy, they don’t want to read. And it also has to do with the dominant culture. They treat Catalans and the Basque Country country like separate cultures inside Spain.
Would you say that Catalonian film is at its best at the moment, in terms of production? There are 22 Catalan productions at San Sebastian this year.
In terms of authorship, for sure. The amount of productions, yeah, a good amount.
How important is it that Catalonia is represented on the big screen for you as someone from Catalonia?
Of course it’s important because it has to do with our culture, but it’s also important because there is a big movement in Catalan with women directors. In this sense, for us, it’s very important because we are slowly reaching equality and I’m very happy that all these friends around me are getting prizes and debuting in the principal sections of festivals. I think it’s a very huge moment in Catalonia. I’m so grateful. We are well-supported by the government.
Finally, what would you like to make a film about next? Is there anything on the horizon?
I’m working on a script now. It has to do with two topics that are very close to me. One is menopause, which I got very early on in my life and is something that is not talked about in public discussion. It changes your life even more than puberty — it’s more radical mentally, physically. But I’m linking that with climate change in a specific region of Catalonia, in which we have overexploitation of the resources: water, air pollution, deforestation, due to the factory farms of pork, mainly. So I’m linking this together in one character, one landscape.
Her involvement in Audrey Diwan‘s new film, in the titular role, was so influential that she says it helped her re-examine her own relationship with female pleasure. “Like Emmanuelle, I was completely disconnected with my body,” the French actress tells The Hollywood Reporter.
With its world premiere opening the San Sebastian Film Festival Friday night, Emmanuelle has received buzz for its graphic content. Diwan’s movie, starring Naomi Watts (Mullholland Drive, Birdman), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) and Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), is inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s erotic novel — and this eroticism certainly helms the project.
Emmanuelle focuses on a woman on a business trip to Hong Kong working with a luxury hotel group. Searching for a lost pleasure, she seeks her arousal in experiences with some of the hotel’s guests. One of them, Kei (Sharpe), seems to constantly elude her.
Merlant’s performance is subtle. She plays a robotic woman attempting to exercise her autonomy over her own sex life and instead, finds a connection that requires no physical intimacy at all. Below, with answers edited for brevity and clarity, Merlant discusses with THR what she first thought upon reading the script, being inspired by France’s #MeToo movement, and why, if Merlant was a footballer, Cate Blanchett would be her Diego Maradona.
First of all, I want to say congratulations on your film.
Thank you so much.
What was going through your head when you first read that script?
When I first read the script, I thought: “Oh, I’m going to read a script that explores the feminine pleasure, and right now I just need that.” Because like Emmanuelle, I was completely disconnected from my body. After the #MeToo movement, I started to think about all these years where I am doing things just to give pleasure to others. I was like, okay, I know that I’m not really happy, that I don’t really have a libido. Why? As a woman who is already 30 years old, I don’t really share eroticism or orgasms with people. And there is sadness in this. In the script, that is there.
She takes the risk. Emmanuelle, who is like a robot and doesn’t get pleasure… She has the power of independency. But she’s alone. She can handle her life, but sometimes she’s in this luxury hotel where she has to always think, to spy on the others, to make sure everybody gets what they want quickly. I had a strong connection with her. And at the end, she says what she wants and when she wants it: “Can you put your hand here? I want this. Can you change the rhythm?”
Did you find then that playing Emmanuelle helped you explore your own sexuality and your own relationship with that eroticism?
For me, doing Emmanuelle, it was an exploration. It broke something – I feel more comfortable, more free, even just saying what I want out loud. So I can start living a new life of exploration, of my desires.
Were you daunted by the graphic nature of a lot of the scenes, or was it exciting? I wondered if you were at all nervous about shooting a film that some actors would deem so vulnerable.
I’m just vulnerable about being good, to be at the right place in the scene and to give emotion. I don’t feel vulnerable when exposing my body in sex scenes. When there is a respectful environment and strong ideas and a space of respect and consideration offered to me, I can go really far, as far as I want. And that’s what happened in this movie. So I was not scared at all, I was excited. It was, “Oh, this is the best for an actress. I have Audrey Diwan with a fabulous vision, I have a crew that knows what they’re doing.” We had a lot of rehearsals with the actors, with an intimacy coach to think about what we do.
After the #MeToo movement, there are a lot of people who say, “Oh, now with intimacy coaches, we can’t do anything anymore.” I think it’s just a little group of people. Yes, maybe they feel they have less freedom, but for the rest of us, there is more freedom. Audrey once said and I feel the same, that when there is space, a big collaboration between people and even an intimacy coach, we go way further. There are way more surprises because you have more people who give ideas.
I want to ask about the #MeToo movement. Its emergence came from the U.S. but the next country after that to be driving this movement is France, especially at the moment. Audrey said this film is an exploration of eroticism in the post-#MeToo era. What message is she putting out there with Emmanuelle?
Before any message, I think she wants it to be an experience of sensations. We’ve been fed so many images of sex, of nudity, of pornography, but in this patriarchal gaze completely dominated by violence. So she was trying to do a movie where we ask ourselves, “Is there still space for erotism and sensations in [women’s] lives?” She tries to make us take the time. Because erotism and sensation, I think, can grow when you are in the present moment. But to get to this place, it takes time. Same with the female orgasm. It takes time.
Just because it’s a feminist movie, doesn’t mean it’s not for a man, [Diwan] says. We hope that with this movie, when you see that she gets pleasure, the men can also get pleasure. Like all the movies we’ve seen about men, we were watching them, and sometimes we had emotions. So it should be the same in the opposite way. I think she also wants to say that consent is exciting. They work together. No one is forced. Everybody listens to each other. And you can feel excitement through this.
One of the focal points of the film is this amazing connection that you and Will Sharpe, playing Kei, have. I love how it develops and how it actually subverted my expectations in a lot of ways at the end of the film. I wonder how you viewed their connection.
For me, he was like a ghost sometimes. But I liked that he was a mystery, because most of the time it’s the woman who is the mystery in movies. I like the mirror between them, both are disconnected and don’t get pleasure. I like that you can still have a strong relation with someone without having sex. It’s not an obligation. This is the story I told myself with Kei: You represent, for me, the man who doesn’t fit the dominant dynamic of the male gaze. They will not have get pleasure if the woman doesn’t. He is also looking for equality and a real connection. It takes time for him, maybe at the end, after, he will have it again. But he is listening to her. I found it very poetic.
With something like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I feel like you’ve become a real champion in film for the female gaze. How important was that to you, and how important is a film like Emmanuelle after decades of cinematic experiences for men?
It’s essential, in my life, to try give more space to women. And to work on this, not only for women but for all the people who don’t have faith in this world. Because you have to find sense in life. So for me, it makes sense and it makes things much more surprising and exciting.
How was it on set? You had Will, Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower. So many Brits. Do you hope to do more English language projects in future?
I would love to because I love this language. There are more opportunities because more movies are made in English. So, of course, you have more possibilities of crazy stuff, working with amazing directors and actors that you admire. I would love to work in different languages.
Is there any language in particular that you would love to do a film in?
Japanese or Korean.
Why?
Because I watch a lot of movies in Japanese and Korean, and I love the language, the culture.
You must have loved shooting in Hong Kong.
Yes! It’s amazing. I thought I would not like Hong Kong, and I loved it.
How come you thought you wouldn’t like it?
I don’t know. Because I felt that it was just too much. But actually, there is beaches, there is space with nature, the people are so nice.
You’ve worked with so many amazing people. Is there anyone on your list, a director or actor, who you would love to work alongside?
I love Yorgos Lanthimos. I love Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I love Nicole Kidman, Jane Campion, Justine Triet.
I wanted to ask about about working on Tár with Cate [Blanchett], who receives her Donostia Award at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival. How was it working with her?
It was fabulous. For me, she is Maradona if I was a footballer. I had the chance to meet an absolutely phenomenal actress. I could watch her so many times because I was the assistant in [Tár]. So I could just stand there and watch how she does the scenes, how much she gives with love to this job. There is something magical, because some people ask me, but how is she so good? There is a lot of things, but also there is something just magic that you can’t explain. She is so nice. I remember there was one scene we shot in one angle and we had to hug, and she was trying to hide her head to make sure I was the one on camera. It was very cute.
That is very cute. And last question, which is simply: What’s on the horizon for you?
My movie, The Balconettes, is out soon. Then there is the Pietro Marcello film [Duse] which will be out soon. There are two more movies I can’t say anything about. [Points.] That’s my agent. [Laughs.]
Read THR’s review of Emannuellehere. Neon has been announced to be circling U.S. distribution rights. Emmanuelle will get its theatrical release in France on Sept. 25 by Pathé.
