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FESTIVALS Spain

A Spanish Tree sprouts in Rotterdam

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The feature debut of Spanish director Carlos Serrano Azcona, El árbol (“The Tree”), had its world premiere in the Bright Future section of the Rotterdam Film Festival, currently underway.

The project has been in the works since 1999, when Azcona wrote the screenplay, which sketches the story of a Mexican father who drifts through a Spanish city while he waits for the end of a custody battle. The fact he is not allowed to see his children until the court case is over slowly drives him insane.

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Using a handheld camera that follows the protagonist Santiago everywhere, Azcona clearly underlines the growing desperation of the character, who tells everyone he is doing fine but who is slowly eaten up inside by the fact he is cut of from his offspring.

Though the narrative is light, Azcona keeps everything grounded in a very low-budget, European kind of realism – at least until a final twist into the absurd at the end. Mexican artist Bosco Sodi makes an impressive acting debut as Santiago, and is in almost every single frame.

Azcona’s modest debut has two famous names on the crew list: Spanish director Jaimes Rosales, who won the Best Film Goya for Solitary Fragments [+see also:
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]
in 2007 and who is one of the producers on El arbol, and Mexican director Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven [+see also:
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interview: Carlos Reygadas
interview: Jean Labadie
film profile
]
), who co-produces.

Azcona was in fact an editor and co-producer on Reygadas’ first feature, Japón, which also had its world premiere in Rotterdam.

International sales of El árbol are in the hands of Estar Ahi Cinema.

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