The Basque director is the big winner at the Malaga Festival with ‘Cinco lobitos’: «There have been spectators who have told me that after seeing it they felt the need to call their mother»
Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (Barakaldo, 1978) is still “digesting” the overwhelming triumph of ‘Cinco lobitos’ at the Malaga Festival, where it won, among others, the award for best film and screenplay, the audience award and the best ex-aequo actress for Laia Costa and Susi Sánchez. The film team went to dinner after the closing gala, but the director swears that there was no gaupasa: “We went to bed, I don’t know if it’s because we are all fathers and mothers now,” she says from the AVE that brings back to Madrid. Motherhood is one of the great themes of her debut feature, which will hit theaters on May 20. But not the only one. The difficulties in raising a 35-year-old new mother give way to issues such as illness and the weight of the family inheritance when the protagonist leaves Madrid and returns to her parents’ town on the Biscayan coast.
«One of the most beautiful things that has happened to us in Malaga is that some spectators approached me to tell me that they connected with that honest and intimate portrait of motherhood, but they also touched the mother-daughter reconciliation. ‘I’ve seen the movie and I’m going to call my mother or my father’, they told me”, recalls Ruiz de Azúa. Among the string of awards that he received, he was particularly excited by the Biznaga de Plata for best screenplay. “This gives me a lot of wings to continue writing,” he thanked on stage at the Cervantes Theater. “Awards get movies talked about, which is wonderful. On a personal level, the script made me very happy because a specific facet of the film made alone is rewarded », he admits.
Carla Simón and ‘Summer 1993’; Elena Trapé and ‘The distances’; Pilar Palomero and ‘The Girls’. The list of winners of Malaga in recent years is dominated by a new generation of directors with a personal and vindictive voice. Alauda Ruiz de Azúa feels part of this revolution that is turning Spanish cinema upside down. «It has arisen spontaneously, it is not something organized. I am excited to be part of these voices that arise, from other stories, from a commitment to a more personal cinema », she notes. «’Cinco lobitos’ can be framed within those sensitivities. I don’t know if I would talk about generational change, but I do know about a door that has been open for a few years.
Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, great winner in Malaga. /
The preliminary draft of the new Film Law, criticized in Malaga by independent production companies, provides that a minimum of 35% of subsidies are for feature films directed by women. The Basque filmmaker has not had the opportunity to study the legal text, currently in the process of being approved. But she regrets that equality is still far from being achieved. “I imagine that the Law contains a point system that encourages women to be hired on filming. But we do not have it easier, the real figures do not say that. There is a will to correct inequality, to amend a situation and for there to be equal opportunities for all. In recent years there are many female directors doing wonderful things and winning awards, so it may seem that real equality has been achieved. But you look at the studies carried out by CIMA and other associations and you discover that only 15 or 19% of Spanish cinema is directed by women. Afterwards, it is very difficult for us to make a second film… We are on the way but there is still a long way to go.”
Alauda Ruiz de Azúa is not a newcomer to the profession. She has a degree in English Philology from the University of Deusto and a diploma in Directing from the Film School of the Community of Madrid (ECAM), she has been living in Madrid for years, where she has a production company with two other partners, Igloo Films. She has signed award-winning short films at international festivals and shot a lot of publicity. She waited until she felt “a personal connection with the story” to make the jump to the feature length. “In film school you perceived that there was not the interest that there is now for female directors, screenwriters and technicians,” she points out. “It wasn’t that easy. On the other hand, I don’t know how she would have reacted to all this at 23 years old. The nice thing about being a mother and having a birthday is that you see things from a different perspective.
At the moment and while waiting for ‘Cinco lobitos’ to be released in May, the director intends to “continue to grow and with short-term plans, I’m very used to having two jobs.” Mother of a six-year-old boy, she admits that cinema is “a complicated profession for work-life balance”. “But it’s not impossible. As in other fields of work, there is much more that can be done. It has to be rethought in another way. There are no tools to reconcile, but rather families try to save the day. Between the hustle and bustle of Malaga and the fact that she works this Monday, Alauda Ruiz de Azúa will not see the Oscars. Her favourite, ‘The Power of the Dog’, by Jane Campion: «It’s a great movie, I was very impressed with how it’s shot and how it turns clichés on its head. It would be a worthy winner.”
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