Sonia Méndez • Director of As Neves
"I was always curious what it's like to be a teenager with a mobile phone in your hand"
- The Galician filmmaker has used first-time actors and isolated landscapes to discuss digitalised youth, isolation and guilt
Sonia Méndez has been an actress (appearing in titles such as The Sex of Angels [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xavier Villaverde
film profile] and Olvido y León [+see also:
trailer
interview: Xavier Bermúdez
film profile], among others), and is a producer –together with Nati Juncal Portas in Cósmica Producións–, screenwriter and director. Now, in the official competition section of the 27th Malaga Film Festival, she has presented As Neves [+see also:
film review
interview: Sonia Méndez
film profile], a dramatic thriller which, as the title suggests, takes place on snowy moors. She spoke to us about it and much more, far from the snow and on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Cineuropa: Your film is produced by yourself and Pedro Hernández, of Aquí y Allí Films. How did this pairing come about? Did he arrive at the beginning of the project or when it was already further along?
Sonia Méndez: We had the film in development and we met at a meeting of the Galician Directors' Association called Conecta, and that's what it's for, to connect creators with producers, and it was instant. We met and he said "You're going to be the first woman I produce! And I told him little about the film, but he’s someone who saw it clearly.
Why name the film after a real village and play on the title like this?
There is a village called As Neves in Galicia, but it has nothing to do with it because it’s in the province of Ourense and we shot in Lugo. I'm a fan of the series Twin Peaks, by David Lynch. So, I wanted to create a setting like that series and at the same time make it universal: because despite being a story that takes place in a village in Galicia and is spoken in Galician, it could happen anywhere, in Detroit or in Extremadura.
Why are you so concerned about youth? Do you have children, is there something of you in the kids in the film or teenagers close to your life?
I don't have kids, but I've been running a digital content festival in Carballo for eleven years related to youth universes and have been working with them a lot, seeing them over time, because it's not the same ten years ago as it is now. And I was always curious what it’s like to be a teenager with a mobile phone in your hand, something so different from my youth. I wanted to portray this moment honestly, not to make a discourse about what one thinks it is to be young, but to listen to them, and to portray waking up in the morning with a mobile phone connected to the universe while living in a remote corner of the world. How is this contrast dealt with? And what happens in environments that become isolated? They live in a digital environment, but suddenly they live in an analogue world and have to face what is happening in reality. They have to face their emotions, which they try to contain by playing with their mobile phones, when the internet goes down.
I also wanted to make a film about teenagers in Galicia and in Galician, because there’s nothing that speaks directly to them there, and whenever I worked with young people in my festival I always thought about this. And I obviously don't want to go back to my teenage years, but I really like certain films about that universe.
You mean the ones Gus Van Sant shot?
Yes, Elephant and Paranoid Park are direct references. The latter is the story of a boy who does something wrong unintentionally and has to face up to it. Good people doing something bad unintentionally and not knowing how to deal with it.
Lack of communication is another big issue in As Neves...
There’s a social responsibility in what is happening, because there’s a lack of generational communication.
Did it help having shot a documentary before (A poeta analfabeta)?
I love fiction and cinematic artifice. It was a fluke. In As Neves I accompanied the kids the whole time and we shot in places where there was real snow. We were in a village where it usually snows, but the filming finished and it wasn't snowing. So, we went to León and while we were there they told us that it was snowing in the original village. Along the way we started shooting, everything went great.
(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)
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