What exactly is "heaven"? How far are you going? The eight-year-old Santa is the protagonist of the Bolivian film cielo by British Spanish writer director Alberto Sciamma, who is willing to go far after swallowing the bright yellow croaker.
Not only did she pull out a shopping cart from her home in desolate Altiplano, Bolivia through a vast desert landscape, she also ended up meeting a priest, policeman and an indigenous women’s wrestling troupe, among others. What drives her is her love for her mother, her desire to save her and her desire to avoid abuse of her father and her faith.
The film stars Metcalf, the newcomer Fernanda Gutiérrez Aranda, Fernando Arze Echalar, Sasha Salaverry, Sasha Salaverry, Cristian Mercado, Carla Arana, Juan Carlos Aduviri and Luis Bredow.
Now, Cielo The UK premiere will be held at the London SXSW on June 6, followed by a screening the next day.
The film "Movie" was produced outside the UK by Sciamma, John Dunton-Donton-Donton, Alexa Waugh and Bettina Kadoorie with the support of Bolivian production company Pucara Films, and Sex became the sales agent for the film with the support of Bolivian production company Pucara Films.
Before the London screening, Sciamma (I love my mom)chat thr About his inspiration for modern fairy tales, working with his charismatic young star and "Cholitas", this is the increasingly popular indigenous female wrestler in Bolivia, and his next step.
"The film starts with two images," the filmmaker shared. "I have a very intrinsic image on the head of a little girl swallowing a fish, and I didn't really analyze it. I don't know why I was fascinated by that image. Then, I have another image of a little girl pulling a cart in an unknown landscape.
What's wrong? A few years ago, at the European film market at the Berlin Film Festival, he met his friend Dunton-Downer and his Bolivian wife who moved from London to Berlin. "They said, 'Well, if you need a deserted exotic landscape, think about Bolivia,' Sciamma recalls. They opened the family album and started showing me photos of Bolivia." "And I think these landscapes are incredible." Inspired, he focused on writing the first draft for the film in a few weeks.
The film ends up talking about various spiritual and religious themes and uses religious symbolism such as fish and paradise. "I am not religious in person, but I was born in a very religious country, in Spain," Sciamma explained. "The surrealism of Jesus on the Cross and all of these things fascinated me. I've always been fascinated by the concept of faith because it's undefined. I mean: What is my belief? We have a lot of original questions. No matter how BBC documentaries these are the questions that shape religion to some extent.
Don't call Cielo However, religious movies! “I don’t think this movie is a movie about religion,” the writer and director told thr. "It's a movie with many things - love and family, our infinite need for redemption, and the general feeling that we are all looking for a better place or trying to find something else in a better place. You know, the grass is always green elsewhere."
How does Sciamma shape his narrative and focus his tone? "I only have one rule when writing: try to do something (audience) rather than analytics, and something full of love, no matter how savage what is happening. I still want it to be very gentle at its core."
The psychedelic feeling you get when watching a movie is due to the director’s goal of providing the audience with an intrinsic, experiential viewing genre. "That's the whole - images, colors, music, sound," Sciamma explained. "All of this is about taking you a really fun journey, a mysterious journey, and hypnotizing you to take you to a place you don't know. The movie I really like is the movie that happens in a space I don't know."
The filmmaker was surprised by the final version of the film after watching the film at the Porto Music Festival. He recalls: “When the movie ended, there was a smile on my face: ‘What is this? What’s going on here?’” When I was writing, when we were all shooting movies and collaborating, we were talking about the content and seeing how we made everything work. But I have never analyzed a movie. Then I thought: 'I figured out better how to explain this. 'I hope it can be a form of entertainment, like jumping into a swimming pool, but the pool becomes the sea, and then the sea is a river and things keep changing. Or, “It is designed to deviate you from the center and transport you elsewhere.”
Sciamma was lucky enough to find Gutiérrez Aranda as his young star, and he was only seven years old when he met with her and her mother and her mother and ZOOM who had never performed before in school competition. "When I talked to her, I realized that this girl was very smart. Then I realized that, in fact, she was in school two or three years in advance, she was already reading all Harry Potter Books, etc. So, we met her and we trusted her. ”
Sciamma's guidance to her is simple: "Be yourself, avoid behaviourism" and don't try to do things. "She was the easiest actor I've ever worked with because she didn't take any action," he said. thr. "She absolutely felt everything. All the tears, laughter and everything else that you see. She didn't fake it. I remember some (very excited and frightening) scenes and moments that were very difficult, she was hard to do, I talked to her and said we could modify the scene, or do something different.
Newcomers even adjusted the last minute changes. “For one scene, I changed all the conversations 20 minutes before shooting, and she learned all the new lines.”
He has high hopes for the future of Gutiérrez Aranda. He told him: "I would love to work with her again because she is already a great actor and a place to go." thr. "She is very talented."
More or less how to work with actual women Luchadors or Wrestlers? "They never took any action, but they were so happy," Sciamma shared. "You try to get into that bus they are on and they will start screaming and joking and inventing songs. They are really fun."
For Salaverry, who plays wrestler Reina, the filmmakers have adjusted the character from the original script version to a character closer to real life. He told him: “In the original script, she was louder. thr. "So I thought I wouldn't fight. I'm going to move on. So I modified the tone of that part."
Sciamma loved his filming experience in Bolivia so much that he wanted to go back there. "In all the places I've been to film, Bolivia is the only place I'd go back to 100%. They don't have (technology and prop houses, as well as the types of other shooting locations). But they have imagination. These limitations actually make them really create creativity." "Bolivia is incredible. It has La Paz, it has dry land, deserts, mountains, and jungles. So it's an incredible place with super talented people."
Sciamma also hopes to return to the world Cielo. He told him, “I kind of wrote the second part.” thr. “I always thought the movie couldn’t end here, so I wrote a continuation of a movie that started in the jungle, which is where we only touch on in some scenes.”
But given that the festival tour is his recent focus, the sequel script will have to wait for his proper attention. "The way I write is that I'm basically disconnected from the world, but I'm just on my laptop," the filmmaker explained.