A documentary about Goya and the film El Agua casts a shadow over George Miller’s Cannes premiere

Spanish cinema also stood out in the French competition thanks to director Elena López Riera, whose first feature film was very well received in the Directors’ Fortnight

With great anticipation, the documentary about the Spanish painter Francisco De Goya, signed by director José Luis López-Linares, premiered on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. The documentary Goya, the eye that listens to the documentary, filmed in Spain just before the pandemic, tries to unravel the mysteries of the great painter from the hand of the writer and former associate of Luis Buñuel Jean Claude Carriere. A double tribute that is also a last journey for the French artist, who passed away in February 2021. «He had collaborated with Jean-Claude on a documentary he had made about Luis Buñuel. So I decided to contact Jean-Claude again to make a film about another Aragonese, Goya. With him I spent 10 days in Spain visiting places important to Goya, from the Prado Museum to the town of Fuendetodos, near Zaragoza», the Spanish director told us. Jean-Claude, who worked a lot in Spain, acknowledges on the screen Goya’s love for our country, not only the good, but also the bad. “I had in common with him an infinite curiosity, an enormous knowledge that they had to share. Our microphone was always on to capture unforeseen moments along the way.”

The documentary is about the mystery of Goya: his life and his paintings. « It is interesting to see how in the Portrait of the Duchess of Alba the gesture she makes with her hand follows the letter G in sign language. Some of Goya’s drawings even show the entire sign language alphabet. The documentary tries to show the impact that deafness may have had on his painting».

Spanish cinema also stood out in the French competition thanks to director Elena López Riera, whose first feature film ‘El Agua’ was very well received in the Directors’ Fortnight. The film drowns the viewer in the magic of an element that grabs our past by the roots. “I don’t know if this film is mine or Orihuela’s, I was inspired by my mother and my grandmother, in my experience, to create the leading women”. The water flows between the fears that are passed on from mouth to mouth, creating a well in each of the characters. The talent of newcomer Lunas Pamiés is surprising, a young woman who will give much to talk about in Spanish cinema.

Not all stories are written to become a movie, that seems to be what happens to AS Byatt’s story that George Miller adapted for the cinema and presented at the Cannes Film Festival today. The film, Three Thousand Years of Longing, will be screened out of competition and will be released in Spain on September 2. “It shocked me when I read it and it has stayed with me all along, the story is strong and it seems to me it contains almost all the great things that concern human beings,” said the director of ‘Mad Max’ at a press conference on Saturday. who is already preparing the next part of this saga. “Yes. We are already working on it,” he said in connection with ‘Furiosa’, a film starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Charlize Theron. “What amazes me most is the power of movies, myths, legends and stories,” Miller said. As he created a new hero in Mad Max and Fury Road, a heroine, in Three Thousand Years of Longing, he explores the power and fascination of traditional fairy tales, of mythological explanations in today’s world.

His film is a love letter to the story and the legends. Why this particular story? I was inspired by ‘One Thousand and One Nights’. Because I feel real, everything in this story is real, except for the genius -Idris Elba’s character-, but throughout the story there is a search for authenticity through fantasy,” admitted the director. Tilda Swinton plays Alithea, an intellectual, an expert in storytelling, who travels to Istanbul for a conference and buys an old bottle at a flea market. She discovers her in her hotel room and frees the ghost, Idris Elba, who grants her the classic three wishes. But Alithea, who is not naive and reluctant to express them, buys time by listening to the stories the genius tells her about how she got there. “I think the film can be read on many levels, depending on the audience.

On the one hand, it offers the story of the struggle of a magician who offers freedom in exchange for three wishes. On the other hand, it is a conversation between science and myth, technology and magic, ideas about immortality and what it means to live a mortal life with love, desire and fear. Often the way we approach stories is through allegory, hence Tilda’s third act and the way she tries to reach truth through stories.” Unfortunately for the magician, his owner and Miller, the tape contains conjecture in its plot. that leave him wishing more than reality.

Source: La Verdad

Wayne

I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.