Storyboard artist Eloy Calvo, an ESCAC graduate specialising in fiction directing and an alumnus of Joso School: Comic and Visual Arts Centre, has directed The Van, a feature that combines animation and live action. The film is set to be released in Spanish cinemas on 20 June, distributed by Sideral.

Cineuropa: Your debut film dares to mix drawing with live-action images.
Eloy Calvo: Yes, it was a challenge — although I wasn't fully aware of it. From the outset, animation was always part of the concept, as those dreamlike scenes were already present in the comic.  I thought it would be quite a low-budget film, given the plot, but everything became more complicated once animation was introduced. It extended the production time, and it was complex and difficult to bring all those elements together.

What was it about the original comic that appealed to you and made you want to adapt it for the screen?
I connected with the protagonist’s unwanted situation — living on the fringes of society, in that last refuge before ending up on the street: the old van. He’s not living there out of romanticism, but out of necessity.  What could have been a drama is treated in the graphic novel with a tone that is at times absurdly comical and fantastical. The father is someone with a vivid imagination, which he passes on to his daughter through the animated elements. All of this, combined with a light feel-good tone, without wanting to hammer it into the viewer, was what I liked the most and what I tried to convey on screen.

The film leans into the power of fantasy.
The main character retains this innocent, almost childlike side, which allows him to connect with his daughter He might be clumsy, at least according to the stereotype, but it’s through this world of fantasy that he becomes a good father — dreamy and naïve.

Is he a bit of a big kid?
He’s someone who hasn’t faced up to certain unresolved issues in his life — things he’s never quite managed to work through. The film's ensemble cast also includes solitary characters, but it is a shared solitude. Sometimes they are unaware that they’re alone, and some are even out of fashion, stuck in time.

A suburban Barcelona appears in The Van.
One of our guiding principles was to avoid postcard images. Instead of showing a recognisable, panoramic view of the city, we wanted to capture it at street level — its working-class neighbourhoods, where people actually live. This is where the protagonist still manages to find a spot to park his van and connect with a community of neighbours who, at times, support one another. We wanted the places he inhabits to feel frozen in time, like the van itself, the bar, or his grandfather’s apartment.  The spaces occupied by other characters have evolved, such as the hipster café or the gym, but Oso (the protagonist) exists in a kind of suspended time, while the world moves on around him.

Filming inside a vehicle must have been... cramped.
I had dreamed of having two vans: one open van that would allow for wide camera movements, and a real one to drive around the streets. But in the end, we only had the latter. It was a limited space where a queue formed outside the door as people waited their turn to come in, and I directed them with my head stuck out of a window. We wanted to steer away from that image of cool vans travelling around the world and appearing on social media. Our protagonist has that inner rebellious streak that drives him to live differently, but having a daughter makes that lifestyle difficult.

Did you have to sacrifice anything from the original novel when adapting it for the screen?
We decided to leave out certain scenes from the comic due to production constraints — we only had 19 days to shoot. We were very clear about what to include and what to leave out. While it meant letting go of a few moments we were fond of, it also gave us the chance to expand on others and explore them in more depth, such as the job interview sequence. We also added an ending to the story. In the comic, it’s left open-ended; we had to give the viewer an ending.

Everyone draws in this story, from the father to the daughter.
I didn't consciously think about it at first, but I also draw: I've done storyboards and worked on animated series. Drawing is an intrinsic language in how I see the world, and that isn’t implicit in the comic: we’ve used it to introduce the animated scenes. And the protagonist explains the world to his daughter using this expressive tool.