Band Together [+leggi anche:
intervista: Daniel Sánchez Arévalo
scheda film] opens in Spanish cinemas (courtesy of Beta Fiction Spain) on the very day 2026 begins. To mark the occasion, we had the following chat with its director, Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, who previously presented the film in the Velodrome strand of the latest edition of the San Sebastián Film Festival.

Cineuropa: Did Band Together start out as a commission, or was it originally your own production idea that you then developed?
Daniel Sánchez Arévalo: The original idea is mine, but it sprang from a YouTube video that my friend and producer Ramón Campos showed me, where you see a rondalla [a band of street musicians], in keeping with the Galician tradition and with all of the traditional instruments, performing a cover of a song by heavy-metal band AC/DC. I got goosebumps. Ramón suggested making a film about that. I went to the first rehearsal of a rondalla with 100 people, south of Vigo; none of them were professionals, but they were there for the love of music, with a great sense of community, a harmonious kind of chaos, and the energy they gave off fascinated me. That’s when I decided to shoot a film with that very thing they conveyed to me as I watched them rehearse.

Could it be subtitled, paying homage to another of your films, La gran familia gallega [lit. "The Big Galician Family"]?
Yes, of course, it could be called that. The important thing is that I, as a Madrilenian with Cantabrian roots, immersed myself completely in that universe, which was unknown to me; that’s why I decided that the technical and artistic crew should be mostly Galician. That made me confident that everything I did would feel truthful. I came out of it with a big Galician family, both among the film crew and the leaders of the real rondalla we shot with. A beautiful bond was forged that has lasted to this day.

But how would you explain what a rondalla is to a non-Spanish reader of these lines?
A rondalla is an amateur music group: depending on where you are in the world, they’re different. But they’re all local ensembles with a specific idiosyncrasy: in this case, from the south of Vigo, with bagpipes, percussion, castanets, tambourines and other native instruments. It was like discovering a pearl inside an oyster, and it encouraged me to show this to the world.

As a Cantabrian, do you feel close to those locations where the sea is so present?
Yes, one of the things that most captivated me about the project is that I’m a boy from the north and felt a great affinity with the landscape: it gave me huge inner freedom, a sense of space and of being able to breathe. I always say I’ll end up living in the north: whenever I can, I want to shoot in Cantabria. Filming in a town like A Guarda, which is so beautiful, made me feel at home - looking at the sea when you wake up, the murmur of the water as you go to sleep… Shooting there made me very happy.

How did you combine professional actors (Javier Gutiérrez, Tamar Novas and María Vázquez, among others) with non-professionals, musicians with amateurs, and intimate scenes with crowd scenes?
It was really cool. The Gran Sol rondalla is made up of people who had never been in front of a camera before, and a special atmosphere emerged during the shoot. We began production by filming with them for two-and-a-half weeks. Filmmaking can be a slog because it’s repetitive, slow and involved lots of waiting around, and the rondalla members understood that, threw themselves into it and never wavered. That positive energy rubbed off on the professional actors and was maintained throughout the rest of the shoot, when we filmed each of their scenes.

What’s the magic formula for mixing serious subjects like grief or mental illness with humour and jokes without it grating?
What matters most to me is getting better at the art of blending humour and drama. If you move me and make me laugh as a viewer, you’ve won me over with that movie. In all of my work, I like to mix comedy and drama. My favourite comedies spring from drama because it gives everything more weight. That’s where the fishing-boat shipwreck in Band Together comes in, an ensemble story with different threads to tug on: a teenage romcom; another about rebuilding life in adulthood and healing from mourning, with a sacrifice linked to love; and more of a comic strand led by Tamar Novas, which allows for more overtly funny beats. I always try not to force either the comedy or the drama. With each film, I hope to keep getting better at that craft of mixing the two.