Marques-Marcet raises the curtain at Seminci with ‘Dust They Will’, a musical film about “the condition of death and the unconditionality of love”

Claudia, an award-winning and renowned actress already in the twilight of her life, decides that she does not want to live through the terminal cancer that has been detected in her, so together with her partner, the theater director Flavio, who has not separated from her In the last forty years, they decide to implement a plan to end their life together in Switzerland thanks to the help of a voluntary assisted dying association. The decision, which he justifies because “I don’t want to live in pain when she leaves,” surprises his three children, who do not understand the path their parents have decided to take, especially his daughter Violeta, the one closest to them and who tries to find his place in this story of unconditional love.

The director has said that precisely the trigger for the script was learning about a similar situation that a couple of friends were going through. From there he undertook a long journey, participating in workshops and listening, until he wrote the first draft of the script, “a collage of very diverse things”, which he sent to his production companies in March 2020, the same week that the pandemic. “Then with Clara Roquet we began to put everything together and try to find the fine thread that could unite them,” added the director, who acknowledged that it was “a very long distillation process” and that The film, which won an award at the Toronto Film Festival, suffered many “altercations” until you see the light.

«It was a debugging job in some way. When you face the end of life, you think about what traditions there are. That led us to the baroque, to how to talk about something that is the end of oneself. It is something very difficult to talk about, so inexplicable, that other languages ​​are needed, and that’s where dance came in and everything came in,” he summarized when referring to the work he has developed with María Arnal and the choreographer Marcos Morau. It was precisely when watching together the La Veronal shows ‘Sonoma’ and ‘Opening Night’ that the director and musician were clear that they needed to have the dance company in this project, “because of their way of approaching the dark from their ability to bring the ineffable, with a strange and absurd humor, which could give a unique tone.

Asked what leads a young director to question death, Marques-Marcet explained that “It’s okay to start thinking about death the sooner the better,” since “we all go there and no one is spared.” «In Catalan love and death are very similar, they are the two themes, there is nothing more, they are very close. When you decide to leave, the first thing it affects is everything around you. It is politically important to think that we do not live alone, but with a lot of people around us, and we wanted to investigate those limits between love and dependence. In that sense, he added that although we all “need other people” sometimes that dependence “can be very toxic” and seeking that limit was also something that interested him in this process.

This “It is a film about love more than about death, and about a love without barriers, which surpasses the love for children, for life and for everything,” agreed actor Alfredo Castro, also present at the presentation, who referred to the project as a “choral” film when discussing very diverse topics. Regarding working with Ángela Molina, he thanked his co-star for inviting him to “travel through very unknown places of acting.” «She is very generous as an actress, very spontaneous and sincere. I had to follow her from outside. Carlos, on the other hand, likes to rehearse and we don’t, so we ended up doing very deep psychoanalysis.

The aforementioned, Ángela Molina, has explained that for her the film narrates “this family’s journey towards mystery.” Asked how she would experience this approach to death, she answered that although this “journey” is “the same” for everyone, “there are as many deaths and ways of dying as there are people.” «Each one must assume responsibility for that relationship that must be established with the real idea that we have to make a path that approaches our own dignity, and if possible do it as we wish, with a smile of gratitude. “Life and love are greater than death.”

In this sense, the director has concluded that at no time did he have the intention with this film to be “provocative”, but rather to try to take the viewer to “places where they can ask questions.”