Daniel Calparsoro | director
Interview
‘Operation Black Tide’ has just premiered on Prime Video, which has already announced its second season, and is shooting the ‘Hasta el cielo’ series for Netflix
“I love directing and I think that is where my greatest strength lies,” says Daniel Calparsoro (Barcelona, 53 years old). This craftsman of thriller and genre cinema hasn’t been standing still lately. A few weeks ago, ‘Operation Black Tide’ premiered on Prime Video, which is inspired by the real adventures of the first narco-submarine intercepted in Europe, a handmade semi-submersible made of fiberglass and without GPS that crossed the Atlantic in 2019 with three tons of cocaine , which is already preparing a second season. Meanwhile, he is immersed in the filming of ‘Hasta el cielo’, which continues in series format the film that he premiered a couple of years ago.
-What seduced you from ‘Operation Black Tide’?
-I was quite impressed with the originality of the drug traffickers to transport the merchandise, but what caught my attention the most was that they crossed the Atlantic Ocean from the Amazon in a fiberglass barge, without GPS, with a compass, with a very basic engine and a generator. It reminded me very much of the adventure of the Kon-Tiki, the raft used by the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl on his 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Polynesia. And that’s what fascinated me the most, because in the end it’s an adventure that talks about the audacity of the human being. There was something very interesting in the story for me, which was to include three characters who don’t know each other and some of them hate each other, but they have to support each other to get ahead, so it’s also a story of friendship.
What is real and what is fiction?
-The incident we have reflected as it happened, but in the characters we have taken licenses and we have not portrayed the protagonists of the story. We wanted to tell the story of Nando (Álex González), a young man who, despite being the Spanish amateur boxing champion, cannot prosper anymore. He works as a sworn watchman in a fish market and helps his grandfather to fish in Galicia. He wants to progress but he can’t, no matter how hard he tries. He wanted to tell that reality, because there is a social group that cannot move forward.
-And I suppose this has intensified with the pandemic.
-The richest have become much richer and the poorest are much poorer. And those of us who used to have something, now we have half. This is so. But what really interested me about the character was that he’s not just driven by ambition. It’s not like in ‘The price of power’, someone who wants to have it all or like in ‘Hasta el cielo’.
-Drug trafficking is one of the great problems of society. Why do you think that governments do not take steps to legalize them?
-It is one of the great problems and one of the great businesses. If the governments do not do it, it is because they take a cut, basically. The big banks take money out because they are the ones that launder it. And the big banks are the ones that give large credits to the parties. There is a very good trilogy by Don Winslow that began with ‘The Power of the Dog’, ‘El Cartel’ and ‘La Frontera’ where it is explained very well. Basically, the US bank Wells Fargo was fined a few years ago for 22,000 million dollars for laundering drug money, a fine that he calmly paid because the business he was doing that year was 629,000 million. And nobody did anything.
Do you miss writing? He hasn’t signed a script for years.
-Yes, well, it’s relative, because when I work with the writers, we talk about the scripts, the scenes, I mix and they work with me. What I haven’t done for a long time, and I have a project out there, is write alone. But I love directing and I think that’s where my greatest strength lies. In reality, directing is having a vision, an idea, a clear concept, but then it always depends on the script, obviously, and on the actors and actresses. The human map and the technical team are what ultimately bring things to life.
-Have you been attentive to the new film law? What do you think?
-I think it’s a disaster. It is a shame that for Spanish cinema the investment is about 50 million more or less. It seems ridiculous to me. I think it is a very neglected sector and the sign of the Government does not matter. A sector that generates some 250,000 jobs, many not permanent, is not taken care of.
-Are you afraid that a part of these grants is now distributed among the series?
-It seems dangerous to me because the platforms also pay for the series and own them. What they should do is provide fiscal facilities, which they already do, but nothing more.
-He misses not seeing his titles released on blu-ray such as ‘Asfalto’ or ‘Jump to the void’.
-We should do it. It is an economic issue. I would, what happens is that they do not belong to me. If I get rich one day, I’ll do it with all of them. I will also make copies in Super 35, because it is the format that lasts the longest.
#governments #legalize #drugs #cut