04/11/2025 - Fernando Franco once again shocks viewers with a daring and unsettling film that pushes them into uncomfortable territory, where only a few filmmakers dare to tread

The work of the Seville-born director Fernando Franco leaves no one indifferent: when it comes to his filmography, there is no middle ground—you either love it or can't stand it. The award-winning editor fearlessly ventures beyond comfort zones, confronting highly sensitive subjects and portraying people and behaviours that few dare to bring to the big screen. He is to cinema what authors such as Chuck Palahniuk, A.M. Homes or Lionel Shriver are to contemporary literature.

His new film Subsuelo [+see also:
interview: Fernando Franco
film profile], an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Argentine writer Marcelo Luján, premieres in Spain this Friday 7 November (distributed by La Aventura and LaZona Pictures). It aligns with his editorial ethos of leaping without a safety net; as he did in his debut feature Wounded [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fernando Franco
film profile] (starring a socially awkward woman), in his second film Dying [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fernando Franco
film profile] (a title alone enough to scare off the faint-hearted), and in The Rite of Spring [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fernando Franco and Koldo Z…
film profile] (which explores the sexuality of the physically disabled). While his previous films premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival, his latest film had its debut in the official section of the 70th Seminci - Valladolid International Film Festival, where last Saturday he received the Miguel Delibes Prize for Best Script, written in collaboration with his regular partner Begoña Arostegui.

A well-deserved award, though somewhat modest for such a risky yet elegant proposal. Yes, elegant is the right word for his staging: in this film the Andalusian director employs more means, resources and elements than in his previous works, which leaned more towards the social style of the Dardenne brothers, with abundant sequence shots and a handheld camera following his long-suffering characters. Now, with the complicity of Santiago Racaj's luminous cinematography, he demonstrates that the blazing brightness of summer is unable to eclipse personal darkness.

Furthermore, on this occasion Fernando Franco embraces genre cinema (the psychological thriller) which, as he himself acknowledges, is akin to Hitchcock, Chabrol and even Haneke: three masters who can be proud of a student presenting such a perverse and twisted tale of fear, guilt, miscommunication and violence within the sacrosanct and blessed institution of the family.

The action unfolds in a wealthy household. An accident alters the lives of its members, particularly the siblings, Fabián (played by Diego Garisa) and Eva (portrayed with convincing pain and anguish by the magnetic Julia Martínez, a Spanish Rooney Mara). These two young adults trapped in their own private hells, hiding them from the adults around them. And a further terrible secret hangs over that fateful night, which the mother (the always superb actress Sonia Almarcha) also knows.

Divided into chapters that highlight the importance of each role within the conflict and with scenes charged with tension, silence and unease, the film places the viewer—who knows the information that the characters dare not voice—before a drama of humans buried by guilt, trapped in a murky, uncomfortable and unhealthy family environment. It is a world in which escape seems impossible, and where one can become dangerously accustomed to the abnormal — unless something is done, something as unhealthy as it is unspeakable.

Subsuelo is a Spanish-Uruguayan production by LaZona, Kowalski Films, Ferdydurke Films, Cinekdoque and Blizzard Films AIE. Its sales are managed by the French company Elle Driver.

(Translated from Spanish)