23/05/2025 - The Spanish director talks to us about her award-winning second feature film, in which she draws on her family experiences to explore themes of grief, uprootedness and economic precarity

The Exiles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Belén Funes
film profile] is the second film by Belén Funes after A Thief's Daughter [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Belén Funes
film profile] (2019), which earned her the Goya Award for Best New Director. Presented in the Centrepiece section at the last Toronto International Film Festival, the film also screened in Thessaloniki, Les Arcs and Malaga, where it won several awards (read news). It finally arrives in Spanish cinemas on 23 May, distributed by A Contracorriente Films.

Cineuropa: The Exiles opens with people working in the Andalusian countryside. Does the family that stays together really stay together? Is oil a great unifier?
Belén Funes: Oil is a great healer. It cures wounds, soothes burns, eases hangovers, nourishes the skin and heals bruises. It's good for everything, at least that's what my grandmother used to say. The family that works the land together spends many days sharing time and work. Some grow closer and some... are separated forever [laughs].

Is it inevitable that when a family loses one of its key bonds, some members will drift apart?
Deaths in a family are always traumatic. Especially the unexpected ones, that come out of the blue, like in the film. I think they shift the balance in families; they challenge the roles we’ve held for years. And for a while, because we’re sad, we are more fragile. What’s tough is that we’ve been taught not to share sadness. So, the bonds of intimacy can easily start to suffer if we cannot talk about the pain, about what is eating us up inside. At least, that’s how I’ve experienced it.  Death was always something that shouldn’t be talked about. It was better kept as part of one's inner life, not something to bring into family conversations.

Grief and the different ways we deal with it is a great theme. How did you approach it in order to put it truthfully on screen?
It’s always said that grief and death are universal concepts and are the same for everyone. But the film tries to challenge that statement and ask: how is grief shaped by class? That’s one of my obsessions, observing how class connects with everything, how it runs through absolutely everything. The Exiles explores grief and the many ways people deal with it. But it also questions sadness. We wanted to highlight how unfair it is not to be able to experience grief, how unfair it is that it is a privilege.

Are all of us who left the countryside for the city, in some way, also exiles?
I like to think so, yes, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on our own circumstances, which follow us and never let go. There are many kinds of exiles. And they’ll likely continue to exist for years and years to come.

What does an exile keep in their suitcase, apart from their life? Do they take a piece of their past, of the places they left behind?
I think they carry a lot of the future, what they hope life will bring them, what they hope the world has in store for them. I feel that they are very excited and eager to discover the new world they’re moving towards. And perhaps, that’s part of the problem for many migrants: the expectations haven’t always been reflected in reality, as if El Dorado remains forever out of reach.

How much of Belén Funes is there in the character of Ana, the daughter, a student of audiovisual communication?
There’s a lot of me in her. Like Ana, I grew up between Barcelona and Jaén. I also have a large, somewhat tumultuous family in Andalusia. In Ana there is a lot of myself, living between two regions as different as Andalusia and Catalonia, and that lack of roots, which I also feel myself. And I don't mean this in a negative way, but rather in the sense of the lightness that comes from feeling like you belong to many places, knowing there are people who love you and are waiting for you in different places.

If you lose your home to eviction, do you become an exile in your own city?
The Exiles bring with it the concept of exile. Given the way life is in cities today, and how hard it is to sustain, many of us will end up moving to places that are more caring towards its citizens. When that happens, yes — we too become exiles.

(Translated from Spanish)