29/08/2024 - Sonia Almarcha and Manolo Solo return to the leading roles in the expanded version of the short by the Spanish director, which deals with the human vileness that gets spewed onto the internet

Actors Sonia Almarcha and Manolo Solo with director Javier Marco on the set of Face to Face (© Jorge Fuembuena)

Who among us has never been on the receiving end of aggressive messages, anonymous attacks or over-the-top insults online? This was the main topic of the fictional short film Face to Face, with which Javier Marco won the Goya Award in its respective category. After that, the filmmaker shot Josephine [+see also:
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film profile], starring Emma Suárez and Roberto Álamo, which was premiered in the New Directors section of the San Sebastián Film Festival, subsequently picking up three nominations for the 2021 Goyas. Now, he has taken that short film from four years ago and is expanding on its themes as he shoots his second feature, bearing the same title and starring the same actors as the original: Manolo Solo (who won a Goya Award for The Fury of a Patient Man [+see also:
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film profile], about to appear in Marco, Half of Ana and The Wailing).

Face to Face (the feature) recently wrapped its shoot on location in Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha, and it also boasts the involvement of special guests Daniel Pérez Prada (The Enchanted [+see also:
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making of
film profile]; he also appeared in Josephine) and Helena Zumel.

“In the short film, we explored the topic of hatred on social networks and how the anonymity they offer facilitates abuse. In this movie, we have taken our characters’ story one step further. Starting from the encounter between the hater and the journalist, we have delved deeper into other themes, such as relationships between parents and their children, empathy, loneliness and how we connect with other people. Despite the differences between them, the main characters in our movie discover that they have a great deal in common, and that they understand each other and can help each other,” states the director, who wrote the screenplay together with Belén Sánchez-Arévalo (Josephine).

At the project stage, Face to Face was developed at the 2021-2022 Film Academy Residencies, Cinehorizontes (Marseille), Ventana CineMad and TorinoFilmLab Next. It tells of how a famous journalist (played by Almarcha) turns up out of the blue at the house of one of her most hot-headed haters (played by Solo) to see if he would dare say to her face all the outrageous things he has been writing about her on his social media accounts… But soon, they will discover that they are not so different from one another.

Face to Face is a production by Pecado Films (Jose Alba and Odile Antonio-Baez), LaCima Producciones (Pedro Palacios and Ricard Sales), Odessa Films, Langosta Films and Biograf Capital AIE. It has received support from the ICAA, the Valencian Cultural Institute (IVC), the Community of Madrid and Creative Europe – MEDIA (Slate Funding). Furthermore, it boasts the involvement of ÀPunt, plus the patronage of the Castilla-La Mancha regional government, Eturia CLM and the Castilla-La Mancha Film Commission, having emerged as the winner of Eturia CLM’s second Competition for the Production of Feature Films and TV Series. The movie will be distributed in Spain by Sideral (although it doesn’t yet have an international sales agent attached).

(Translated from Spanish)