Fiorella de Ferrari and the girl Pamela Saco are in charge of giving life to Susan and Cinthia, Julius’s mother and sister, respectively. The long-awaited film version of Alfredo Bryce Echenique’s novel will hit theaters on November 12, directed by Rossana Díaz-Costa. De Ferrari, who is in Spain, answered us some questions.
Maybe you found some flesh and blood “Susan”?
Many. I have observed those who choose to live on the surface out of fear of themselves or of their environment. There are those who remind me of Susan because they do not listen to her curiosity, do not chase her and prefer to stay in a known area, who think that they do not have the right to the pleasure of answering her questions and going to the end of what that means. Others remind me of Susan because they fail to build deep bonds with their children, because they delegate the intimacy of the relationship and lose that love. There are Susan who, like ours, feel entitled to everything, but are not very aware of the rights of others. There are many Susan and if we are careless, if we get cold, we can look like them.
The director has said that all Peruvians are some character in Un mundo para Julius.
I hope that the film allows us, then, to ask ourselves why and if there is something that we do not like in that “mirror” we have the courage to change it.
Vargas Llosa pointed out that the novel presents a blind and refined world of the oligarchy. Has Lima changed in fifty years? Why?
I believe that in these fifty years we have initiated important debates, our narrative on fundamental concepts has changed and we have legal frameworks that support and defend those ideas. The discourse has changed, but everyday life, the street, intimacy and relationship systems in general reveal our fragility and inconsistency. We talk about equality between men and women, but in 2020 alone 5,500 women disappeared and 138 were victims of femicide. We defend the right of children to participate in public life, to be integrated into society and their right to education; however, only 4% of schools in Peru are open and have been closed for more than a year and a half. Our narrative is more “progressive”, it seems to be on the good side of things, but our actions are tiny, mediocre and inconsistent. Everything that embarrasses us, that which is reflected in us when we see A World for Julius is still there, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. Now, at least, there are things that we do talk about and no longer in secret.
Debut
For Pamela Saco, this feature film marks her acting debut. “I came to the casting thanks to the mother of a friend,” says the girl who will turn 11 next month.
“From what I have heard is a beautiful story, not only of innocence but of how badly human beings behave. Racists and classists. We cannot understand that we are all the same ”, he says.
“I’m the one who gets along the best with Julius. He loves it just the way it is. We play without any difficulty. In one scene I had to cry, it was complicated because I had no inspiration, but I thought my dad would go on a trip for a few days ”, he tells as an anecdote. ❖
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