28/11/2024 - The sister directors of Chavalas take on their second feature film, a coming of age starring young first-time actors and produced by Fasten Films and Saga Film

Directors Carol and Marina Rodríguez Colás on the set of La Gang (© Arnau Bach)

The creators of Chavalas [+see also:
trailer
film profile], sisters Carol and Marina Rodríguez Colás, shoot their new film entitled La Gang, starring new actors. It tells the story of three teenagers who travel from the outskirts of Barcelona to uptown, which will make them discover that it is not easy to escape from social prejudices.

A story of male friendship starring Ayman, a Moroccan boy who is invited by Sara, Catalan, to her 16th birthday party in the same house where the young man's mother works as a maid. Accompanied by Eric and Rober, his best friends, they will embark on a journey full of confrontations and disappointments, both with society and with themselves, putting their brotherhood to the test. Once at the party, they will discover that life is not as they thought it would be and that will is not power, but they will always be able to have their friends as travelling companions.

The filmmakers say that “we knew we wanted to make this film by observing our neighbourhood and seeing how new generations, who share their daily lives with neighbours and long-standing businesses, encounter the same subordinate conditions of the past, but without the class shame of our generation. They're proud of their roots and are not so afraid to show their yearnings and frustrations.”

In 2021, the Rodríguez Colás sisters premiered their first feature film, Chavalas, in the official section of the Malaga Film Festival, which won the Audience Award and the ASECAN Best First Film Award, among others. One of the independent phenomena of that year, it was also nominated for Best New Director at the Goya Awards and for two Feroz awards. Marina is also part of the screenwriting team for the Movistar Plus+ series The New Years [+see also:
series review
trailer
series profile], created by Rodrigo Sorogoyen and premiered in Venice, which premieres on the platform on 28 November.

When they participated in the third edition of the Film Academy Residencies with this project, the filmmakers stated that “La Gang came out of the urge to explore how migratory diversity has evolved in the peripheral cities where we’ve grown up and where we have focused our work, previously inhabited by migrants from the peninsula and now of Maghrebi and Latin American descent. We feel a responsibility to create content that makes these realities visible, which have hardly been represented in our cinema. To do so, we’ll focus on three young people with different origins (Moroccan, Andalusian and Dominican) with something in common: they are part of the young people in our country who are systematically marginalised because of their race and/or purchasing power. We’ll work on a fresh, funny, energetic and forceful story with natural actors, avoiding stereotypes and paternalism.” They mentioned titles such as Magaluf Ghost Town [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Miguel Ángel Blanca
film profile] and El odio as references.

La Gang is a film by Fasten Films in association with the Belgian Saga Film, and with the participation of Movistar Plus+, in coproduction with Proximus, VOO, Be TV and Orange Belgium and with the associate production of Gabriel Kaplan and Muy Buena Films. It is supported by the ICAA, the ICEC, Media Europa Creativa, Programa Ibermedia and the City Council of L'Hospitalet. It will be distributed in Spain by Filmax.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)