02/02/2022 - The first feature-length fiction film by the award-winning shorts director is a social fable that blends humour and fantasy, toplined by the Basque actor alongside young Daniela Pezzoti

Director Alejandro Suárez, actress Daniela Pezzoti and actor Karra Elejalde on the set of Kepler Sexto B (© Natxo Martínez)

The end of January saw the start of the shoot for Kepler Sexto B [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Alejandro Suárez Lozano, who, on the heels of his successful shorts The Fisherman, Carpinteros-Wood Work and Hidden Soldier, has jumped head first into directing his first feature-length fiction film. Talented actor Karra Elejalde (whom we saw not long ago in Alejandro Amenábar’s series La Fortuna [+see also:
trailer
interview: Alejandro Amenábar
series profile], and who will appear imminently in Llegaron de noche [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Imanol Uribe, set to be released in Spain on 25 March) heads up the cast of this social fable that melds science-fiction and comedy. The cast is rounded off by first-timer Daniela Pezzoti, Jorge Bosch (who pops up in the new series Rapa [+see also:
trailer
series profile] and Todos mienten [+see also:
trailer
series profile]), Vicente Vergara (Once Upon a Time in Euskadi [+see also:
interview: Manu Gómez
film profile]) and Pablo Molinero (who both acts in and co-wrote the screenplay for Ultrainnocence [+see also:
interview: Manuel Arija
film profile], a film that premiered recently at the Slamdance Film Festival).

The autonomous community of Valencia is the setting for this movie, the shoot for which will take place over five weeks on location in Castellón, Vall d'Uixó, Valencia and Torrent. The plot introduces us to Zaida (played by Daniela Pezzoti), a solitary girl who lives with her step-father in a modest neighbourhood, and her neighbour Jonás (Karra Elejalde), an older loner who spends his days taking refuge in his imaginary world, believing his flat to be a spaceship, the Orion, on the strange, distant planet of Kepler, and he himself to be a NASA astronaut. A chance encounter between the two will blossom into a special relationship in which they will find out more about one another and help each other, embarking on a surreal and emotional rescue mission to save one another, protecting them from the trials and tribulations of life.

Because here, Suárez uses an original aesthetic approach to explore the scars left by the most recent financial crisis, through the main adult character, a kind of Don Quixote who thinks he is involved in an interplanetary mission, and a girl who is stuck living with her legal guardian. Against this backdrop of complex realities, the director offers an ode to life, friendship and, above all, hope, describing his film as “a surrealistic, funny, emotional and bittersweet space voyage, which attempts to blast off from a harsh, harrowing reality and head towards a more life-affirming, optimistic proposition where, despite all the difficulties, life is worth living”.

For his part, Karra Elejalde admits that he was captivated by the moving and original script, and by the performative challenge represented by stepping into the shoes of a character who lives his life teetering between lucidity and madness.

Kepler Sexto B is a production by Turanga Films, Pincheforn Producciones and Kepler Sexto B, AIE, in co-production with Quexito Films and Noodles Production (France). It has secured the support of the ICAA, the Valencian Institute of Culture, TVE and À Punt Media, and boasts the involvement of Crea SGR and the ICO. Filmax will oversee its Spanish distribution.

(Translated from Spanish)