The filmmaker Patricia Ferreira died today in Madrid, her hometown, at the age of 65, a victim of a brain tumor. Goya candidate for revelation direction with I know who you are (2000), the filmmaker also won the Biznaga de Plata at the Malaga festival for best script for her work alongside Virginia Yagüe in Wild kids (2012). Her career has probably been less prolific than she would have liked, but her passion for other struggles, such as the founding of CIMA (the association of Spanish women in the audiovisual field), and her commitment to education have left their mark on Spanish cinema along with to some of his titles.
Graduated from the Faculty of Information Sciences in Madrid, Ferreira began as a film journalist at TVE and Radio Nacional, from where she went on to become a director and scriptwriter for cultural programs such as Equinox; A day in the life of our ancestors, documentary series about life in prehistory; A country in the backpack, a series in which José Antonio Labordeta toured Spain; either Nearby paradises, a travel documentary series with scripts by writers such as Rafael Chirbes and Javier Marías. In addition, he worked as an assistant director on fiction series such as May you kill him well, Cervantes either The matchmaker.
In 2000 she made her film debut as a director with I know who you are, a film that premiered at the Berlin Festival, in the Panorama section and with which it was nominated for the Goya for best new director. The story of a young psychiatrist (Ana Fernández) who finds herself in front of a fascinating forgetful patient with Korsakov syndrome (Miguel Ángel Solá) helped her develop a genre that always attracted Ferreira, the thriller with something else, that added a political or social aspect: “It is a thriller of characters in which we find doses of action, intrigue and love, without forgetting a part of the plot that has clear political implications,” he said at its premiere, in a phrase that seemed like a declaration of intentions. And filmed in Galicia, the land of his family.
Two years later it premiered The impatient alchemist, which adapted the homonymous novel by Lorenzo Silva, a thriller which develops the investigations of two civil guards—the sergeant of the Central Operational Unit, Rubén Bevilacqua, and his assistant, Virginia Chamorro—, and which has become a literary and cinematographic saga. Regarding squaring the circle, that is, versioning books to the author's taste, the filmmaker pointed out at the time: “When the story begins to grow from paper and becomes a film in which many people work, being faithful is impossible. ”.
That decade put Ferreira on the list of the most interesting Spanish filmmakers: in 2004 she participated, with her short The best kept secret, about AIDS in India, in the collective film In the world all the time. The following year he directed So you do not forget me, with Fernando Fernán Gómez in one of his latest characters, in a drama about the relationship between three generations of the same family. Again, in the background, memory. The drama participated in the Berlin festival.
In 2010 he made the documentary Lady of, a work to be recovered in which, through testimonies from women of very different ages, showed the immense talent lost in Spain when female creators remained locked up in their homes and in their marriages. An echo that could be felt in the audiovisual. She herself said in 2017, at a meeting on women filmmakers: “Cinema is in male hands and hence the themes we see on screen. Many young women do not dare to take the leap. We must reinforce equality policies in culture, in cinema, because compromises have always been made but coherent regulation has never been made.”
Just two years later his best film would arrive, Wild kids, which won the Biznaga de Oro for best film at the Malaga festival, the aforementioned award for best script, and the awards for supporting actor and actress. As Javier Ocaña pointed out in his review of a drama about (bad) education: “Ferreira preaches an agile, clean, natural production, like the movements of the characters, always out in the open, and structures his circular script in a series of interviews to the three young protagonists in which, a great decision, the interviewer is always out of screen, only he can be heard: they are the guardians, they are the spectators, it is us, it is society, which interrogates them when it should be us who are interrogated. .
In 2017 he said goodbye to cinema with Thi Mai, heading to Vietnam, a comedy based on taking advantage of the chemistry between Carmen Machi and Dani Rovira, who had just won in Eight Basque surnames and its sequel, Eight Catalan surnames. His latest work in the audiovisual field has been the creation (and co-writing) of the TVE series The lawyers, directed these days by Juana Macías and Polo Menárguez, and which is based on the real life in Madrid in the late sixties and early seventies of four young women of letters, fundamental over time in the history of Spain: Lola González, Cristina Almeida, Manuela Carmena and Paca Sauquillo.
In his educational aspect, Ferreira taught directing classes at the Madrid Film School (ECAM) and in numerous workshops, schools and faculties. She was also a co-founder and was part of the board of directors of CIMA, in addition to also being on the board of directors of the Film Academy for six years. She is survived by her partner, the filmmaker, journalist and cultural manager Fernando Lara, her daughter and her granddaughter.
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