The director shoots ‘We will not kill each other with guns’, the reunion of a group of friends who have not seen each other for years
María Ripoll shoots ‘We will not kill ourselves with pistols’, a film defined as ‘dramedia’ about the lost youth, at the time that it disappeared and that it is trying to recover, often desperately, and the capacity and need as well, every day more current, to reinvent itself. The film shows a group of friends who meet again in the town of their youth after years without seeing each other, to celebrate a very special anniversary.
Starring Ingrid García-Jonsson, Elena Martín, Joe Manjón, Lorena López and Carlos Troya, the film is an adaptation of the homonymous play by Víctor Sánchez Rodríguez, winner of the 2016 Max Best New Authorship Award, whose script is signed by the author himself together to Antonio Escámez, with the action located in a town on the Valencian coast with a fishing tradition.
The plot presents how, while the town prepares to celebrate its main festival, the Virgen del Mar, Blanca tries to make sure that the first paella she prepares in her life is perfect for her. He has managed to gather five lifelong friends back to town to meet up. They haven’t seen each other for a long time. Some tried to make their way into the city, others abroad, and one stayed in town. They are all in their thirties and feel that their youth is slipping away from them, like the ship leaving the port. Decisions have become lives, and theirs walk between job insecurity, disenchantment, separations and a continual starting over. Some hope that the reunion can fix their lives, but things are not so easy. The meal lasts until dusk and culminates in the party: proof that the world continues to turn while the lives of the protagonists reel. The paella lasts until dusk, between revelations of secrets, reproaches and misunderstandings. And, finally, the festival arrives: the proof that the world continues to turn while the lives of the protagonists seem to be reeling and more than ever they will need each other to get ahead.
For the screenwriter and author of the original work Víctor Sánchez Rodríguez, it is a generational fresco that reflects on those who were born in the 80s, the so-called millennials. a generation in which many expectations were placed, educated in individualism with a view to professional success, and that today struggles to try to get out of the pothole of precariousness and uncertainty. It is a tribute to the deluded, to those who believe that their first love is still waiting around the corner to mend what is broken, to those who “look back (with and without anger)” because, for the moment, no they have a “forward.” And perhaps it is also a tribute to the nostalgic in times when we are exhorted to always be “in the present.”
Ingrid García-Jonsson in ‘We will not kill ourselves with guns’.
Since her film debut with ‘Lluvia en los zapatos’, María Ripoll has become one of the directors whose films have performed best at the box office, with titles such as’ Now or never’ or ‘Do not blame karma for what you go for an asshole. ‘ Ripoll considers that this new film “is a generational portrait of rabid current events, a drama with a good dose of comedy that, at times, can be heartbreakingly nostalgic.”
To the production companies, Lina Badenes, from Turanga Films, and Belén Sánchez, from Un Capricho de Producciones, who together already produced the multi-award-winning film ‘La innocencia’, by Lucía Alemany, this story immediately attracted them for its “choral, summery and acid. We belong to a generation that has been able to claim the difference and we want to focus on key issues of our time, and do it in an interesting and, at the same time, fun and cheeky way ”, they say.
‘We will not kill ourselves with pistols’ is a production by Turanga Films and Un Capricho de Producciones, and has the support of the Institut Valencià de Cultura, the Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals, Televisió de Catalunya, À Punt Mèdia and IB3, with the associated production of AMC and Pasarela and the sponsorship of Vermú de Reus and Cerveza Turia. The person in charge of the distribution will be Filmax, which will premiere it in 2022.
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