21/09/2024 - In a narrative that swings back and forth between drama, thriller and indictment, Icíar Bollaín reconstructs one of Spain’s most high-profile recent cases of workplace and sexual harassment

After Maixabel [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Icíar Bollaín
film profile], a movie based on a true story, with which she competed at the San Sebastián Film Festival three years ago, actress and director Icíar Bollaín is back to take part in the official section of the Basque event with I Am Nevenka [+see also:
trailer
interview: Icíar Bollaín
film profile], another film that draws inspiration from real events. Again, it sports a woman’s name in its title and boasts one of the former film’s lead actors, Urko Olazabal (who picked up the Goya Award for Maixabel), among the cast.

In I Am Nevenka, the Bilbao-born actor breathes life into the charismatic and popular mayor of the Leonese city of Ponferrada: a guy with a reputation as a ladies’ man, as a supporting character states. When he is widowed, he starts to flirt with his youngest councillor, Nevenka Fernández (played by Mireia Oriol, an actress who previously appeared in The Art of Return [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pedro Collantes
film profile] and The Pact [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: David Victori
film profile]), whom he has promoted by giving her responsibility for the Tax department at the city council. However, despite the woman’s refusals, he begins relentlessly harassing her in such a manipulative and aggressive way that it will land him in court.

Bollaín thus returns to the topic of gender-based violence, which she previously tackled in her 2003 film Take My Eyes [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a work that earned her seven Goya Awards. However, while in that case, she tackled it from a private angle (and a fictional one, at that), focusing on the home and the family, this time, she talks about the same subject matter but in the public sphere, basing her story on a groundbreaking indictment case in Spain. At barely 25 years of age, the real-life Nevenka dared to lay her cards on the table and testify before the microphones of media outlets that insisted on judging her unfairly and brutally, denouncing something that, in the early 21st century, emerged as the seed of a global movement against toxic masculinity.

With the close involvement of her co-screenwriter, Isa Campo (a filmmaker whom she previously teamed up with on Maixabel), and drawing inspiration from the book Hay algo que no es como me dicen (lit. “There’s Something That Isn’t as They Say It Is”) by Juan José Millás, the director has turned the Nevenka case (which already had a documentary dedicated to it in 2021, directed by Maribel Sánchez-Maroto, which is available to watch on Netflix) into a feature that combines elements of thriller, psychological horror, and family and social drama. Indeed, with the camera accompanying the main character at all times, Bollaín tries to elicit the viewer’s empathy, identifying with this victim of a distressing, paralysing and absurd situation that overwhelmed her and caused so much damage, as she felt alone in the face of a danger that the cowardly society around her chose to turn a blind eye to.

Making good use of dramatic tension, the film – which is impeccably crafted, but which has a tendency to lean towards TV-movie territory, taking minimal risk in its mise-en-scène – respectfully appeals to people’s dignity, starting from its very title, and raises its voice (like other recent films) against abuse, harassment and chauvinistic violence – the kind that, unfortunately, continues dominating the headlines.

I Am Nevenka is a Movistar Plus+ original film produced by Kowalski Films, Feelgood Media and Nva Peli AIE. Its international sales are overseen by Film Factory, and it will be released in Spain on 27 September, courtesy of Buena Vista International.

(Translated from Spanish)