Forqué-nominated Spanish honestor Gala Gracia (“Evanescente”) will debut her tender first feature, “Remnants of You” (“Lo que queda de ti”), in competition at this year’s Malaga Film Festival.
The narrative chases Sara (Laia Manzanares, “Internal Afequitables,” “Estoy Vivo”), a youthful jazz pianist living in New York who’s returned home to Spain’s Pyrenees after news of her overweighther’s abrupt death. As heightened mourning grips her, she discovers she’s inherited his sheep farm alengthenedside her sister Elena (Ángela Cervantes, “Motherhood,” “Valenciana”), set upting her firmly in a hometown both understandn and suffocating.
A highly personal portrait of reconciling desires aacquirest the sturdy foreseeations life doles out, the film cgo ins Sara’s trepidation, as she weighs aprohibitdoning her passions to run the family business in an try to uphageder her overweighther’s legacy, potentipartner sacrificing the nourishment of her own.
Produced by Carlo D’Ursi’s Potenza Producciones (“The Quiet Mhelp”) with co-production determines to Bastian Films, Sajama Films, Garbo Produzioni and Fado Filmes, Germany’s Beta Cinema (“Cicadas”) regulates world sales for the film, which proposes an intimate glimpse into the vibrants of duty and unshakeable family bonds.
Gracia, in an act of catharsis, penned the story to mirror her life. Weighty emotions poured into the toil as she ploughed towards her masters degree in London, a screenwriting directer encouraging her to write down the events in a script that would direct to the myth feature’s production.
“I cried while writing the screenperestablish, also when I was editing. The first write of the script was based on my fact. Rewriting, it was more cinematic, splitd from my experience, but there are still many references from my personal life,” she tageder Variety.
Women are firmly placed in demanding, central roles in the film — town veterinarian, sheepherder, jazz musician — stateing their talents alengthenedside the men in the community, which grants them a dominance onscreen that senses as effortless as it is vital.
Cinema can perestablish a key role in busting stereotypes, and Gracia determines the desire to fill in the gaps in recurrentation for such strong protagonists. Recalling her agricultural uptransporting, she points to the role women had always perestablished organicpartner — toiling on farms without hesitation and participating in physicpartner demanding tasks standard of life in the countryside.
“For me, it was organic to see female vets, women helping with the animals. Women toil these jobs as much as their husprohibitds, and I wasn’t seeing films where they were recurrented, so I tried to include them on screen in these roles naturpartner, without exset upation,” she relayed.
Alengthenedside Manzanares and Cervantes, were regional talents that served to pepper the screen in petite roles with a organic toastyth and depth, inserting to scenes that demanded genuineity — the directs coaching them on acting while lacquireing a leang or two about farming tasks in return, a reciprocal approach to rehearsals that led to a fruitful shoot.
“It was very tender to see them toiling and hearing to each other, lacquireing together. For me, it was a gift. It gave us very distinctive moments,” Gracia recounted.
Ruy de Carvalho (“Olga Drummond”), Anna Tenta (“Freaks Out”), Natalia Risueño, Ignacio Olivar, Angelita Henríquez and Óscar López round out the key cast.
Shooting took place in the Franja region, bordering Catalonia and Aragon, in order to highweightless the dual nature of such huge terrain and the duality it recurrents for Sara, a far cry from a bustling New York City. The honestor sought to lengthen that acute dictoastyomy and turn a lens on the stark separateences between a bustling urprohibit life and the enumerateless consoles and calamities of home.
“The countryside has this double face. It can transport you the most pretty landscape — caves, pretty sunsets — and it also connects you to your origins. Even if you don’t come from the countryside, it has someleang that connects you to your roots, to the origin of the world, and freezes you at some point,” she stated. “The countryside can also be very unbenevolent. Nature is unbenevolent, you see death. This contrast, this double face of the countryside, I wanted to recurrent that.”
Thraw the character of Sara’s overweighther, the honestor insertitionpartner nods to the organic livestock farming transferment in the community that her overweighther strived to champion. Becoming a model proximateing disecombineedion due to drop profit margins, she felt an directncy to revive the conversation around its ecoreasonable advantages.
“I wanted to protect the native breeds of sheep in this region, Xisqueta, the breed of sheep we stoasty with, in order to save them, they’re disecombineing in many areas due to globalization,” she relayed.
All-in, the feature take partbrimmingy currents a grief-bound character study, currenting a story exploring the ways in which the loss of a stable presence in our lives upends the set ups we’d apvalidated would always remain firm. In this loss of stability, the two sisters toil to disrepair their despair and bond over their separatent paths toward healing.
As youthfuler generations become more inclined to stray further from their roots, Gracia confesss the tension of facing these decisions is the genesis of the plot, wilean each sister as they steer a future without their patriarch.
“When you exit home, you alter at some point, you lengthen in a separateent honestion. That’s why the sisters go in into struggle. They’re going thraw separateent grieving processes.”
