Visionary filmmaker Carla Simon’s new movie digs into AIDS epidemic
When she was six, Carla Simón lost her mother to AIDS, a legacy of heroin use. Her father had disappeared from her life years ago, presumably dead himself, so young Carla, who grew up in bohemian Barcelona, was taken in by family friends who worked on a small farm in the mountains. It was a sharp upheaval for the motherless child, but it was also joyful, idyllic and loving: a haven of grief. His experience became the subject of his feature debut, 2017’s superb film. summer 1993This gave the director an instant international reputation.
But what surprised him was the reaction to the film in Spain. “I had this website at that point,” he says after the premiere of his new movie RomeriaThis also explores his shady past. “The weekend after publication Summer My email inbox was full of people saying, ‘You just told my story.’ And I realized it was super big. There was a heroin epidemic in Spain in the 80s; it also had the highest number of deaths from AIDS in Europe; it was a collective pain that was little discussed. “In Spain we always talk about how badly we remember the Civil War,” says Simón. “But this is also a historical moment that we must approach.”
Afterwards Summer He had two possible next projects in mind. chose to do Alcarrasis a vivid portrait of a family of tenant farmers about to be evicted from the orchard where they have worked for generations. This story came from his large adoptive family; it won him the Golden Bear in Berlin. His other project, which is still pending, was about the love of his parents. He wasn’t sure about that. She had just given birth to her own child; his tendency was to look forward. But he had to do this not just for himself, but for all the people who wrote to him. “Because this wasn’t just my story, it was the story of a whole generation.”
This story began with the death of General Franco, who ruled as dictator from 1939 to 1975. “It was really like a super-Catholic place, and young people were very repressed. Then Franco died, and then there was an explosion of freedom,” says Simón. It was the cultural moment of La Movida Madrilena. It was also, less happily, a fest of substance abuse.
Simon’s father, the child of a wealthy family in Galicia on the northern coast of Spain, loved the sea. He lived on the family yacht most of the time, which meant he could receive deliveries of heroin.
“Heroin came through Galicia, where the coast was difficult to control. The government didn’t do much to stop it,” says Simón. He says there is an opinion in some circles that young people who use drugs will at least stay out of politics. “But it was about trying things, freedom and living in the moment. Then came AIDS.”
Growing up, he had nothing to do with his grandparents or their Galician clan. He visited for the first time when he was 18; Romania means pilgrimage. In the film, she frames her story as that of a young film student named Marina (played by local Llucia Garcia, whom Simón sees getting off the bus). Apparently, Marina is traveling across Spain to pressure her grandparents for a signed copy of her father’s death certificate, which will allow her to apply for a scholarship to film school. But he is curious at heart. Who are these people? Does it look like them?
“To understand who you are, you have to understand a little bit about where you come from,” says Simón. “I know some people don’t need it, but maybe it’s because I have a big family and I’m a filmmaker.”
Most movies about outcasts searching for their estranged families are filled with anger. “They’re angry because they feel abandoned, because they lack love, but I didn’t lack love. I was totally fine!” says Simon. It is clear that the family is hiding a truth; It is clear that they have difficulty coping with this.
“It’s painful for them, so I tried to tell the family’s story with empathy and understanding,” he says. He didn’t want to judge his parents either. “It was a very important generation that broke away from all these old values,” he says. “We are where we are because they turned everything upside down.”
The only thing Marina knows about her parents’ romance is in her diary, which is based on actual letters her mother wrote to her friends. She is honest and direct, but she wants to see the places her mother told her about, visit their home, walk on the beach where they run naked. The film cuts between lively improvised, naturalistic scenes of the family, becoming a clearly fanciful film within a film, as Marina meets her parents on their balcony and is swept away into a surreal scene set in a dance club. Garcia takes on the role of her own mother, while rock musician Mitch Martin plays both Marina’s father and her favorite drifter cousin, Nuno. The sequence unfolds like a dream.
“For me, there was something about the idea of spaces that people had once passed through and then when you came back there, there was something spiritual that connected you to them,” says Simón. “But it’s also frustrating because there’s nothing to tell you whether they’re here or there, whether they live in this building or this other building. Marina is looking for something but she doesn’t know if she’ll find it.” Even so, she finds images, true or not, that show the words in her mother’s diary. “It can kind of bridge the imagination gap.”
He also discovers that his grandparents cared for his dying father and kept him in seclusion for years after believing him to be dead. No one was allowed to see him; They were ashamed. Once again, the story belongs to Simon. The entire crowd of his uncles and cousins are not happy as even now he is speaking openly about the cause of his father’s death. “Well, it’s painful for them,” he says. “So I tried to tell the family’s story with empathy and understanding.”
Some of the truths had been hidden from him, but some memories had become blurred over time. Beyond the story of Simón’s parents and their generation, this film is about the workings of memory. “You try to put the pieces together, but everyone tells you stories in their own way,” he says. “Because they become the protagonists of the stories: ‘I told your mother that’ or ‘She did that because of me.’
“And at some point, I realized that even if my parents were alive, I wouldn’t know the truth. Because the way we remember is by remembering the last time we remembered something.” Not the thing itself; These are memories that become reality. “So memories are constantly changing; we rebuild them for our own convenience. But then I realized that I have cinema to create my own point of view. To create a story, even if I don’t know if it’s true or not.” And now we state that this is true because he turned it into a new memory: a memory of his movie. “Yes,” he agrees. “That’s right.”
Romeria It opens in theaters on July 9.
