Ione Atenea (Pamplona, 1985) has won the prize in the Panorama Spain section of the 21st Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival with her second film, Los caballos mueren al amanecer [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Ione Atenea
fiche film]. The filmmaker from Navarre, who debuted with the feature film Enero [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], talks with this writer a few days before she returns to Barcelona to also take part in D’A.

Cineuropa: Has chance played a key role in developing your new documentary, finding all this material by chance?
Ione Atenea: Yes, it was a real discovery, a surprise. I felt lucky and excited to have this treasure: that world and those lives that were no longer there.

In Enero you got very close to your grandmothers' lives. What does that film have in common with Los caballos mueren al amanecer?
All my works stem from wanting to document a lived experience, with the theme of legacy in both films and the presence of death. They are very different, but they also have elements in common.

Family is also a common theme in both.
Ultimately, chance has created this family from the protagonists in my feature film (the García brothers) and us, because we share the same space, although in different times. I become heir to this legacy, but in a way it is also immaterial, because it is their story. They are documents that have been orphaned and I have decided to take them in.

With moments of fear and doubt for intruding in other people's lives....
When I reached some intimate places of these deceased people I started to feel intrusive: I felt like I had just met them and, when there is such a connection, I thought they would love me to tell their story... or maybe not. But it is something I will never be able to ask them because they are dead. I wondered whether I needed their permission. But the film is made with the utmost respect and affection, focusing more on their role as creators than on their private lives.

Sometimes the viewer wonders if the three brothers in the film did not have adult relationships, as if they were stuck in an endless childhood.
I was thinking a lot about Peter Pan and also Alice in Wonderland. There were similarities with these stories because they moved in fantasy.

Almost all of us as children have played our heroes, from Tarzan to Captain Thunder.
Playing and holding onto your childhood, even if you are an adult, made us really identify with them and connect with them.

So, the film is a hybrid between the material you found and your personal contribution.
Yes, I wanted to show my contribution: what I imagine, think or deduce, and the information found. I felt like they were so close to me, as I lived in their house, I didn't feel comfortable making up a story. There are wonderful films that make stories out of found documentary material, but I wanted to stay as faithful as possible to what I found, making clear what I added of my own to the story. Because there are personal archives that are passed down from generation to generation, but what happens to those stories when there is no one there to receive them?

Los caballos mueren al amanecer sees its protagonists recreating genre films just for the sake of it, without seeking fame and fortune. For you, has the pleasure of recovering these stories also been your driving force?
Absolutely, another connection with them, something I identify with a lot, is creation as a personal need and a way of thinking about the things around me. And, although I also suffer when I create, I try to enjoy creating.

The García’s were a very close family, like you and your sister, Marina Lameiro (Young & Beautiful [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film]), who also appears in the film.
My sister is also a friend and part of my community, as several of us now live in the same house. We form another kind of community, which we can also call family.

But why bring your friends from the present into the film, with these new people following in the wake of the creativity already apparent within these walls?
From the outset I wanted the focus to be on the relationship between the present and the past, and between the family of the past and the family of the present, and how these two times coexist in the house. That is why it was important to represent what the house is like today and what happens there, as a lively, creative space.