18/11/2025 - The Catalonian director talks about his feature debut, a historical film that brings an intersex figure back to the limelight, and about how best to tell this singular life story

(© Lolo Vasco/SEFF)

We met up with Marc Ortiz Prades, who has world-premiered his debut feature, Els mals noms [+see also:
film review
interview: Marc Ortiz Prades
film profile], in the Rampa section of the 22nd Seville European Film Festival, where he took home the AC/E Award for Best Direction of a Spanish Film and the Ocaña Award for Freedom (see the news). The movie is a fragmented portrait of Florencio Pla Meseguer, an intersex person born in 1917 who lived as a woman until joining the guerrilla fighters during the Spanish Civil War.

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Cineuropa: Your grandmother was the seamstress for your film’s central character, who is always dressed in black. Why?
Marc Ortiz Prades: I used the colour black as a symbol, to lend uniformity to the three actors who play the character at different ages. What’s more, in the only surviving photo of Florencio when he was called Teresa, they are dressed in black. It’s a concept/symbol that repeats itself, from the time they are socially a woman to when they are a man called Florencio. It’s a dress that looks like a cassock; it eliminates the body that this person doesn’t feel at home in. Black conceals the body. The dress we use in the film is a reproduction of the one in the photo we found.

Few films address intersexuality; I can barely recall the 2007 Argentinian title XXY [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Lucía Puenzo.
We had a talk here in Seville about the subject, and we commented on the fact that the "I" in LGTBI+ is the least well known. There isn’t much out there on intersexuality. Over the past five years, Florencio has appeared in some literary works or stage pieces, but this aspect hasn’t been explored much in cinema.

Was it easy to pitch the idea to producers, or did you have to explain the character in detail?
We found a bit of everything everywhere: the first place we took it to, TV3, said yes quickly, but the ICAA didn’t. ICEC and IVC did. It took two years in total to secure the financing.

The film is divided into chapters bearing the different names the protagonist takes on.
It also represents stages of our recent history. I tried to be rigorous when writing the script, based on the oral memory passed on to me by people from my village and the surrounding area, as well as scholars on the subject. What happened is true; I cross-checked it, but it’s fragmented because there are gaps, aspects that we haven’t been able to find. In fact, I’m discovering things about Florencio now that I didn’t know at the time.

And what’s your own creative contribution?
I included the family’s familiarity with and respect for him, as well as the scene of the mother’s death – she had an intersex child, but he was never rejected. I was meticulous, but I took some liberties in explaining certain things.

We think we’re modern now, but in past societies, diversity was already accepted, as in Mexico or some Asian countries.
When this person was born, in their village they were accepted as if they were totally normal. When actor Pablo Molinero was rehearsing a scene, a neighbour from the area where the real person lived spotted him and told me he looked just like Florencio. Even when dressed as Teresa, he would drink with the men and play with the kids.

The film’s darkness recalls a certain rural, naturalistic Italian cinema…
We had many references, but no specific names. We wanted to work with Alberto Bañares, whom I’ve known since ESCAC, on a naturalistic form of cinematography that would show the character’s repression and inability to express himself. From there, we opened up the frame, because he gradually gains the freedom, expansiveness and identity he needs. We also used kerosene lamps like those from the period in pursuit of that naturalism.

As shown in your feature, if we don’t have a name in the dictionary… do we not exist?
When I was researching intersexuality, I came upon silence and a lack of points of reference. Florencio learned to write when he joined the maquis; I found it interesting to have a dictionary there, and that image is very illustrative. Also, we don’t choose the names we have; they’re given to us. And the surgeries performed on intersex people push them towards a normative body so that we can "place" them more easily.

(Translated from Spanish)