When talking about pioneers of Spanish cinema, two groups of directors are always mentioned. The first, formed by those who started it all, Cecilia Bartolomé, Josefina Molina and even Pilar Miró; and the second, those that achieved the first awards and recognitions, with Icíar Bollaín and Isabel Coixet as great references. However, and although they all are, among those names and the new generation of Spanish filmmakers who have revolutionized our industry, there is one that is not always highlighted as it should. Which is not always placed in the place it deserves when reviewing the recent history of Spanish cinema, and here comes one of the great novelties, in Catalan.
Mar Coll has been a great reference for all those who came after, but it has been a more silent or even more shadowy reference. However, when all the new Spanish directors who win awards around the world are asked about those people who inspired them, who made them see that this was possible, Mar Coll’s name comes up. Because in her they saw a young woman, who made her debut at less than 30 years old and who made a cinema that was unlike anything we had seen.
The arrival of Three days with familywhich premiered when she was 27 years old at the Malaga Festival (where she won the Silver Biznaga for Best Director) was an earthquake for many women. It was an intimate and political story, the deconstruction of a Catalan bourgeois family that spoke, surprise, in Catalan, which even provoked criticism in 2009. Later, it would win the Goya for Best New Director and became one of the greats. promises of Spanish cinema. He is now 43 years old.
What few were aware then is that it was much more than a promise, it was a paradigm shift that was confirmed with We all want the best for her (2013) and one of the most personal series that have been created with the fiction boom in Spain, Kill the father (2018). Since then, a pandemic and motherhood have passed, and all of this has been consolidated in her new film Hail Mary. A realistic and unfiltered look at motherhood that is one of the great Spanish films of the year.
“I want to do this”
The films that change us are those that make you remember the exact moment you saw them, and that is what happened to Carla Simón with Three days with family. She was studying a master’s degree and at that time she was in Barcelona. I already had the idea of making films, but I didn’t even know where to take the first step. When she left the room something had changed in her. “I remember going out and crying. I was going home and I called my mother and said, ‘I want to do that.’ It opened up the possibility for me to believe that as a young woman and a woman you could make a film about your own family experiences and in Catalan. There were so many points in common with what I wanted that it was really very revealing and very illuminating,” says the director of Alcarras while editing his new film, Pilgrimage.
For her, there are obviously many references, but she does feel that Mar Coll “started something that has to do with our generation of filmmakers” and that “little is said about her.” “When I think about who started it all, his name always comes to mind,” he adds. Mar Coll had the same importance in Belén Funes, in this case as clearly as the director of A thief’s daughter He worked for the first time in a film thanks to Mar Coll. He had just left university and entered the filming of Three days with family. “For me, leaving university and seeing a young woman at the controls of a movie was everything,” she says forcefully.
I remember coming out of watching his movie and starting to cry. It opened up the possibility for me to believe that you could be a woman, young, and make a film about your own family experiences in Catalan.
Carla Simon
— Filmmaker
For her there were two foundational moments in realizing that she wanted to be a filmmaker. The first, when he saw “that Isabel Coixet was in one of the shortlists of nominees for best director at the Goya”, the second, when he started filming with Mar Coll. “I expected the directors to be something else, and suddenly I arrive at the office of Escándalo Films, which was the producer of the movie, and I find a super short, super young, super close aunt, who has a thousand doubts, but who at the same time Maybe she is very clear about the movie she is making, what she has to do, how she has to rehearse, how she has to direct the actors, having her voice and showing it off in a good way, surrounded by super young people just like her making the movie… yes it wouldn’t have happenedr Three days with the family I don’t know if I would be directing now,” he adds.
Filmmaker, woman… and in Catalan
For Elena Trapé, Mar Coll’s cinema discovered something “new and interesting”, and she believes that it “redefines what Catalan cinema means or what Catalan cinema and in Catalan can be.” Trapé is somewhat older than Mar Coll, since he studied another career before coming to film, but he studied a promotion below at the ESCAC. Already then he remembers the power of Coll’s short films. Of Three days with family underlines the importance that “it was a film in Catalan, entirely in Catalan.” When he came out to see her he thought that this could be his family. “That’s my grandfather,” he said.
He remembers an anecdote that clearly demonstrates the political power of that premiere in his language: “It was the first film in Catalan that was in Malaga, and at that moment there were people who left the theater because it was being shown in its original version.” . “At that time he was one of the first people. I roll blog the year after Mar and we don’t dare to do it in Catalan. Some of the girls in the film, in fact, stayed in the background because they couldn’t improvise in Spanish. They were noticeable. So we had to make some sacrifice at that level,” he recalls and highlights how he made those eminently Catalan experiences “something very universal at the level of cinematographic language.”
Nely Reguera also worked on that film as an assistant director. I had been in bigger productions like The perfume, But suddenly she was in a film “that represented cinema” that she liked and that she dreamed “of making one day.” “Of course it was important. In fact, shortly after I finally decided to direct Pablo, my short In my case there was already a desire to be a director. I don’t think I direct because I participated in Three days with the family, But it was important to see that the cinema that I liked and that I intended to make was being made, it was being made by a woman and she was doing it well,” she says and also highlights the importance of it being filmed in Catalan when few people did. they did. What stands out about her is “the sensitivity and lucidity of her gaze, where she places the focus when she portrays society, human beings and our way of behaving and relating.”
A support network is formed between all of them, which also has a lot to do with the ESCAC, but which is not exclusive. These women, who came later (a little or a lot), help each other in everything. They read their scripts, see the first cuts of editing and have broken with many of the (masculine) stereotypes about competitiveness in cinema. All of them, when asked about Mar Coll, emphasize that another name is also mentioned, one that is usually less mentioned. It’s Valentina Viso’s. She is the co-writer of all of Mar Coll’s works, the second part of an infallible tandem that is also responsible for the scripts of some of them, such as Maria (and the others) either Summer, 1993. Without Mar and Valentina, Spanish cinema that has opened new themes and perspectives would be very different, and much worse.
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