26/09/2025 - The director talks about the origins, challenges and metaphors of his second feature, built around the traditional sport of the Canary Islands

(© Ulises Gutiérrez/SSIFF)

After his second feature, Daance of the Living [+see also:
film review
interview: José Alayón
film profile], screened in the New Directors section of the 73rd San Sebastián International Film Festival, Canarian director José Alayón spoke to us about the origins, challenges and metaphors of his film.

Cineuropa: How did the idea for Dance of the Living come about? Where did you start – with the wrestling itself, or with the intimate relationship shaped by the pain of losing a mother or a woman?
José Alayón: It could really be both starting points. The type of cinema that interests me tends to be intimate – family or friendship dynamics where small conflicts arise out of miscommunication and resistance. Even my previous film, Slimane [+see also:
trailer
film profile], was about a friendship between two Maghrebi boys. Canarian wrestling is part of the Canary Islands’ collective imagination. We practise it at school from a young age; there are clubs, and on Friday nights, it’s on TV. I practised it as a kid, then I stopped. About seven years ago, I went to a match with a filmmaker friend and rediscovered it. As a fan, I loved it – the atmosphere and the wrestling itself – because it has quite an epic narrative structure. I really like to build films from the body, from the physical, and wrestling was perfect for that.

Canarian wrestling is still very local. What strategies did you use to make the film more universal?
The story of grief and the lack of communication between a father and a daughter was always the core I wanted to explore. From the outset, in Canarian wrestling I saw more than a spectacle – I saw a metaphor for life, resilience and the personal conflicts we all experience. I wanted the film to have both physical and emotional power, so I worked with real male and female wrestlers, bringing their bodies, presence and energy into the narrative. The creation process was very organic: I kept rewriting during rehearsals, the shoot, and even in the edit, going back to film scenes whenever I felt it was necessary. I like to let reality seep into the film – to let the unexpected and life itself transform the story. For me, that flexibility is essential; without it, it’s hard for anything to truly work. Every change, improvisation and adjustment was an attempt to bring us closer to an emotional truth – to a rhythm and intensity that would reflect what I wanted to say about life, struggle and human connections.

The landscape is often perceived as hostile and arid, even though it’s usually shown as a tourist destination. Did you want to use that harshness as a mirror for the characters?
I’m from the Canaries, and I’ve always felt a certain rejection of the touristy image that’s been built around the islands. Since the 1980s, the Canaries have been presented almost exclusively as a leisure destination – and that’s even shaped how we think. As a filmmaker, I felt compelled to push back and show another side of our reality. Canarian wrestling, which predates Spanish colonisation, struck me as a perfect act of resistance to reflect that. That’s why we chose Fuerteventura: its stark, powerful landscape, the mountains contrasting with the wrestlers’ bodies, and the constant, brutal wind that brings discomfort and contributes to the strong narrative. Over the last ten years, Fuerteventura has also developed a strong passion for wrestling: venues really fill up, and the best wrestlers often gather there. It also mattered that our leads, Tomasín Padrón and Yasmina Estupiñán, live there. We shot almost the entire film in the village of La Pared.

In general – and on this film – you work as both producer and director. Did you have your own “struggles” to contend with during the shoot?
It’s complicated to combine producing and directing. I often even found myself in a contradictory place: as a director, I want the film to be perfect, but as a producer, I also have to keep the budget in mind, which is crucial. Cinema is very fluid; it slips through your fingers. When you think you’ve got it under control, it’s already changed. You can learn to anticipate, manage schedules, and handle technical or craft aspects, sure, but each film is different. Many times, you sense there’s a good film in there, but you have to go and find it. I’m interested in a type of cinema where things are discovered along the way. In this profession, you have to keep reinventing and rethinking yourself. If you believe you already know how to do it, that’s when a good filmmaker starts to become a bit more mediocre — and you can feel the difference on screen. It happens: filmmakers have made excellent movies, and then, suddenly, their next one doesn’t have the same power — it’s just not the same. And yes, it’s exhausting. Always searching, changing and making films — it wears us down in the end!

(Translated from Spanish)