2024-09-09
“Taking part in the San Sebastian Festival helps raise your profile with the public, the industry and the media”
The documentary, ‘That world that gives you nothing’ (Ese mundo que no te da nada), by Ernesto del Río, has been selected to feature in the Zinemira section at the next San Sebastian Festival. We chatted with the director and scriptwriter about his latest work and about the significance of its selection.
It is about understanding the complex relationships formed between some women and some men at various times and places in which they happen to live. It is also about love affairs that fizzle out and about disappearances that, subsequently, nobody knows anything about; it's about the generation gap, youthful ideals against dictatorships, both their own those of other people, and it's about the difficulties young people face in trying to make ends meet. The film covers a time span between 1975 and 2019 and takes place in two coastal cities: Bilbao and Havana.
How did you come up with the idea for this film?
It's the sum of several components. Images we filmed randomly in Havana in the 2000s that we never used, documentary footage and films that I shot at different times and in various formats in Bilbao. By adding present-day footage to this material, a new narrative structure emerged that we used to recreate the lives and quest of the three protagonists.
What does it mean for you all, now that you've been selected by the San Sebastian Festival this year?
We are delighted. For a film like this - a documentary - it means greater visibility and enables us to raise awareness of our work to the public, the industry and the media. We very much appreciate that this festival will enable it to be seen in a public arena, on the big screen; obvious enough, but not so much anymore.
What is your goal while attending?
We are presenting the documentary at this festival because of the opportunities it offers. We want it to do the rounds in the current exhibition channels.
As well as Zinemaldia, what path do you envisage for your work?
Thanks to the prestige afforded by the San Sebastian Festival, we hope that other festivals, both national and international, will appreciate our work, especially those dedicated to documentary film-making.
Once this tour is finished, will the documentary be available on any platform?
The most likely outlook for any film production nowadays is to end up on a platform. When that time comes, we will get in contact with the one best suited to this kind of product and that will enable us to reach the largest possible audience.
What other projects are you working on? Could you give us a little preview?
To keep on writing screenplays and looking for stories until we find one that meets the target.