La casa (lit. “The House”), the new feature by Álex Montoya (Asamblea [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], Lucas [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Álex Montoya
scheda film]), has been shooting since mid-November on location in and around Valencia. The movie, based on the comic of the same name by Paco Roca (also published in France, Germany, Italy and the USA), stars David Verdaguer (who has just appeared in Reyes contra Santa), Luis Callejo (glimpsed in the series Offworld [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Rodrigo Sorogoyen e Isabel…
scheda series]), Olivia Molina (Memories of My Melancholy Whores [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]), María Romanillos (Staring at Strangers [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Félix Viscarret
scheda film]), Marta Belenguer (En temporada baja), Miguel Rellán (Sentimos las molestias), Jordi Aguilar, Óscar de la Fuente, Lorena López and Tosca Montoya.

The synopsis tells of how Antonio has died, and his three children, with their respective families, get together for a few days in the modest second home that their father built and looked after, in order to tidy things up and then sell it. But the memories, secrets and old arguments all rear their heads and make the process more complicated.

“It’s a difficult moment that, sooner or later, we are all bound to go through: saying goodbye to our parents, and if at all possible, without leaving any loose ends. Not everyone is cut out for that,” states the director, who praises Roca’s ability to convey the emotions felt by the characters. The challenge when it came to bringing it to the big screen was to ramp up the intensity of the conflict, and broaden the dialogue and the situations from the original, but without losing any of its essence. “In addition, I’m very happy with the casting for the movie because the actors have really made the story’s characters their own,” the filmmaker explains.

The author of the comic that the film is based on, Paco Roca (whose other works Wrinkles [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ignacio Ferreras
scheda film], Memorias de un hombre en pijama [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Carlos Fernández de Vigo
scheda film] and La Fortuna [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Alejandro Amenábar
scheda series] have already got the big-screen treatment), asserts, “This experience is different to the other times when I’ve worked with animation, and even to the actual act of drawing, where you are creating your world from scratch. Now that I’m witnessing the shoot itself, I think it’s incredible all the staging there is to do to recreate those illustrations, and it seems enormously challenging to me. La casa is a project that I completed when my father had just passed away. For me, drawing means reflecting on a topic, and straightening out what I was feeling at that precise moment, and that’s why this is one of the most special comics I have made, because it changed my life, both professionally and personally.”

The film, produced by Raw Pictures, Nakamura Films and Haciendo la casa AIE, boasts funding from Spain’s Film and Audiovisual Arts Institute, the Valencian Institute of Culture and the State Official Credit Institute, with the involvement of RTVE, À Punt Mèdia and CREA SGR. Its Spanish theatrical distribution will be entrusted to A Contracorriente Films.