An industrial unit in the neighbourhood of Sant Martí, Barcelona, will be playing host to the shoot for the animated stop-motion flick Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake until December. Its director and screenwriter, Irene Iborra (known so far for her short films, such as Citoplasmas en medio ácido, Click and Cuentos celestes), the first female Spanish director to helm a movie using this technique, thus adapts the novel La película de la vida by Maite Carranza, published by Barco de Vapor in 2017. The book has sold 24,000 copies in Spain and has also been translated into eight languages.

According to the team behind the film, My Life as a Courgette [+leggi anche:
recensione
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intervista: Claude Barras
scheda film], now an iconic title on the European animation scene, which scored an Oscar nomination to boot, is one of the artistic inspirations behind the project. In addition, the child voices of the main characters in this story will be accompanied by the adult ones of actress Emma Suárez (winner of the Goyas for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress the same year for Julieta [+leggi anche:
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Q&A: Pedro Almodóvar
scheda film] and The Next Skin [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Isa Campo, Isaki Lacuesta
scheda film]) and renowned journalist Jordi Évole.

The movie will tell of how, after an unavoidable eviction, Olivia, her little brother Tim and her mum Íngrid squat in an empty flat in the suburbs. Íngrid, who is optimistic in nature, simply runs out of energy, and Olivia is forced to fill in for her, caring for herself and the little boy. In order to conceal her fear and shield her brother from the harshness of reality, she pretends they are shooting a film. However, the idea she has come up with to protect them also causes her anguish, prompting her to experience strange earthquakes that make her fall over, time after time. But soon, a very special family-cum-community will gradually form around them, which will teach her how to get up after she falls and to overcome adversity. Because while we can’t always control what happens to us, we can choose the way we get through it.

“Contributing to the effort to destigmatise evictions and child poverty with such a gorgeous story is a very powerful, and even beautiful, way of sharing this delicate topic with children,” explains Iborra. “The message is encouraging and full of light,” she adds. She also underlines the ability of the stop-motion technique to use puppets and fantasy to broach the need to build support networks when confronting life’s various earthquakes. 

Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake is a co-production by Spanish outfits Citoplasmas Stopmotion, Cornelius Films and Bígaro Films, France’s Vivement Lundi!, Belgium’s Panique! Production and Chile’s Pájaro. It boasts the involvement of RTVE, 3Cat, À Punt and Movistar Plus+. It is being backed by ICEC (the Catalan Institute of Cultural Enterprises), the ICAA, IVAC (the Valencian Film Institute), Barcelona City Council and the Ibermedia programme. French company Pyramide International will oversee its international sales, and it will be distributed in Spain by Filmax, in Belgium by Le Parc and in France by KMBO.