27/09/2024 - Although she has already co-directed the series The New Years with Rodrigo Sorogoyen, the director is competing with her feature debut, focusing on a return home, which she filmed in her home town

(© Dario Caruso/Cineuropa)

Sandra Romero is one of the young talents on the current Spanish film scene: not only did she direct some of the series The New Years [+see also:
series review
series profile], created by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, but she has also just presented her feature debut in the New Directors section of the 72nd San Sebastián International Film Festival. As Silence Passes By [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sandra Romero
film profile] is an expansion of the battleground she explored in her 2020 short film Por donde pasa el silencio, which scooped an award at Málaga.

Cineuropa: If I’m not wrong, this is your second A-list festival, as you were recently at Venice with The New Years…
Sandra Romero: That’s correct. Paula Fabra and Sara Cano, the creators of that series with Sorogoyen, know me from the residencies I’ve taken part in. They were looking for co-directors and introduced me to Rodrigo. We met, and he picked me without having seen this film. I felt like we could work well together, and that was indeed the case.

You mentioned some laboratories. In what way did they help you?
Cima Impulsa was the first one that helped me, with tutorials by screenwriter Alicia Luna; it took place in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. The Spanish Film Academy Residency, with Carla Simón as a tutor, was also helpful because getting a film off the ground is a very long process in which you go back and forth, and learn to listen to other people’s opinions: there are things you might agree with, and others that you have to try out and which are perhaps not up your street. But it’s all useful stuff because when you make a movie, you have to know what you want to do and find help accordingly. The Berlinale Script Station was also important for the project, and there, I felt like the screenplay was already in good shape: one also has to stop and resist going to all the labs in the world…

Would you say this first film of yours is a spin-off of your previous short, a younger brother or a kind of son?
It initially emerged from it, but it ended up being very dissimilar. They share the same setting where the action unfolds and the same Eastertime atmosphere, but the story is different: there’s an overlap in the topic of the protagonist returning home, but the short film consisted of an encounter with an ex-boyfriend/former lover, while in the feature, it’s a reunion with his brother: it tackles the love between siblings and fraternal relationships.

What’s more, the feature stars the Araque brothers – Antonio and Javier – who are siblings in real life.
We are from the same town. I was 15 years old when I met them, and they were 18; we became friends and I spent my teenage years with them. Antonio went to Madrid to study with Cristina Rota, and I followed him to study film at the ECAM. Life brought us together along the way. In addition, we already realised at film school, when I began to direct shorts, that we were comfortable working together. I was lucky that he was there because we trusted each other so much that it allowed me to learn better than I did with other people. It suits me when I get to know the people I work with. We were both in it from the start. I am very interested in family ties and the filmmakers who analyse them. Furthermore, Antonio has a twin brother, which I found intriguing: I was fascinated by them, and that prompted me to get the ball rolling on this project. I suggested it to them, I wrote it, and they agreed to star in it.

So in what way did reality influence fiction in As Silence Passes By, or vice versa?
I began writing a fiction film, thinking about them and placing them in fictional situations, although Javier’s illness is real and runs through the entire movie. Our starting point was this delicate reality, which he laid bare so utterly honestly. That's the point where the relationships with the brothers start to take shape because that has a huge impact on a family, and especially on twins, because something happened when they were born. I didn’t want to theorise, but rather to seek out something more emotional. In that sense, they and I really slogged our guts out: it was rewarding and painful, but the fictional part helped us to frame things that aren’t easily tackled in real life, which sometimes we don’t understand completely. Fiction grants us a structure through which we can gradually progress. The entire mise-en-scène is cinematic, but in some scenes, there are truthful elements. It’s a blend of fiction and documentary, but the film is a fictional construct that touches on some real-life situations of the people who appear in front of the camera.

(Translated from Spanish)