Carlota Pereda signs the horror film of the year, seen at Sundance and winner of the Méliès d’Or in Sitges: “They bullied me at school and I witnessed cases of harassment that I kept silent about and they have created me a wound”
Carlota Pereda (Madrid, 1975) knows that saying in Basque that says “herri txiki, infernu handi” (small town, big hell). “I used it a lot in the film,” she discovers. “It was about making the character’s life as claustrophobic as possible.” ‘Cerdita’ develops the director’s short film of the same name, awarded the Goya in 2019. Its protagonist is the daughter of the butchers of an Extremaduran town, a victim of bullying due to her obesity. Her daily hell will be altered by the appearance of a psychopath who kidnaps the girls who harassed her.
‘Little Pig’ arrives in theaters this Friday, October 14, after having given a lot to talk about at the Sundance Festival and having won the awards for best film in Austin and Strasbourg. In Sitges it has just won the Méliès d’Or for best European feature film and in the coming months it will be released in countries around the world. Its originality lies in addressing a theme typical of social cinema, such as bullying, from the wicker of genre cinema and without giving up costumbrism. As if ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ took place in Puerto Hurraco.
Actress Laura Galán, who already starred in the short film three years ago, carries on her shoulders the full weight of a nightmare that, unlike Yankee terror, takes place in an everyday universe that is perfectly recognizable to our eyes. The torrid Extremaduran summer makes Sara’s day-to-day life more distressing, the object of contemptuous looks in the family butcher shop and cruel jokes in the pool. Until a stranger kidnaps and tortures the trio of girls who make his life impossible, while he seems to be attracted to her. Her mother (Carmen Machi) smells something, the village gossips whisper and the civil guard investigates, but Sara doesn’t open her mouth despite the fact that she tortures him to hide the truth.
“In the towns it happens as in families, they give you a role and you don’t take it off anymore,” laments Carlota Pereda. “If your grandfather stole some chickens, you are the one with the chickens, she goes from generation to generation,” says the director, who has spent the summers since she was a child in the region of La Vera, in Cáceres, because her family is from there . «When the short was released, many people wrote to me on social networks telling me that they were from town and that there is no possible escape. You are in a prison, you go to school with the people who bully you, whom you will meet again in high school.
The harassment that has always existed enters a new dimension because of social networks. Poor Sara is not only called a “pig”, but photos of her are posted on the internet. “If the town is already suffocating in itself, with the networks there is no longer a safe space,” condemns Pereda. “On top of that, it’s people you don’t know, so the victims of bullying, who already have insecurities, think that ten thousand people are right. And that’s terrible, you just have to look at the teen suicide statistics this year. Now that’s a horror story.”
Laura Galan in ‘Little Pig’.
Sara is flesh and blood, unlike most horror movie heroines. She compulsively eats Pink Panther cupcakes on the sly and masturbates while watching porn on her cell phone hidden under the sheet. At home, she does not receive love and for the first time she is going to feel like the object of desire of the madman who is killing people in the town. “For me it was very important to create a localism to tell something of truth,” observes the director, who went so far as to make the boy Amets Otxoa, who plays the protagonist’s little brother, speak with an Extremaduran accent. In ‘Cerdita’, she eats black pudding and people shop at the Chinese bazaar.
Director and screenwriter of series such as ‘Periodistas’, ‘Los Hombres de Paco’ and ‘Águila Roja’, Carlota Pereda has introduced sensations that she knows first-hand into her first film. «As women, we are always asked to talk about our own experiences, such as motherhood. And yes, I was bullied at school and I witnessed many cases of bullying », she recalls. “I witnessed and kept silent, and those cases are the ones that have hurt me, the guilt has remained with me.”
It is the same thing that happens to the protagonist, who has it in her power to take revenge for so many years of humiliation. It is up to her to show if she is a good aunt or bad people like her harassing her. “I wanted to make a moral thriller without giving up entertainment about a person who doesn’t do something.” Genre cinema acts in ‘Cerdita’ as a container for other themes that are more frequent in social films. “That allows it to reach an unaware public in some cases,” explains Pereda. “People who go to see a movie about bullying are aware of the issue. This is poisoned popcorn, so they have a very heavy digestion », she laughs.
Carmen Machi and Laura Galán in ‘Cerdita’.
‘Cerdita’ contains moments of black humor and enjoyable gore scenes for fans of the genre, especially in a final stretch that refers to the foundational ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. The list of films that its author has reviewed is extensive: «’The seventh day’, by Carlos Saura, ‘Who can kill a child?’, ‘The forest of the wolf’, ‘Trouble every day’, by Claire Denis , for the way of showing the bodies and photographing desire, ‘Eden Lake’, ‘Jeepers Creepers’, ‘Deliverance’, ‘The stranger from the lake’ and many more…».
Carlota Pereda acknowledges that she has been very lucky with her leading actress, Laura Galán, who has a long resume and, at 36, is capable of playing a minor. The director discovered her in a performance of ‘Medea’. “She’s a great actress and she has her bulletproof ego,” she praises. “She does not wear any makeup or prosthetics to make her look younger, she gets them only with her acting work.” ‘Cerdita’ is committed to advancing the story through action and not through dialogue. “I come from TV and maybe it was a reaction,” she agrees.
“I conceive ‘Cerdita’ as if it were poisoned popcorn, so that the public has a very heavy digestion”
«They have even told me that it is men who make thrillers»
Already immersed in the pre-production of her next feature film, Carlota Pereda faces the international impact of the film “happy and relieved because Sara has found people who love her.” She cites Álex de la Iglesia, Paco Plaza and Jaume Balagueró as pioneers who paved the way for female directors like her, who are finally shooting horror films. “All references are recent. Josefina Molina made a movie many years ago, but no one has seen it. Some women have not been interested in the genre, others have not even considered it because they think they will not find a producer and there are those who have been told, like me, that men are the ones who make thrillers. Things are changing quite a bit”, congratulates the director, who feels part of the wave of female directors who are turning Spanish cinema upside down. “This would not have happened without the colleagues who came before and without the work of associations like CIMA,” she remarks.
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