After being presented at the San Sebastián Festival and four days after the premiere of “Soy Nevenka”, director Icíar Bollaín went to Zamora to participate in a discussion meeting about the film that took place in the same The city theater where the filming took place Ponferrada refused to offer the locations necessary to record the majority of the interior scenes. The filmmaker spoke about the role of the Ponferrada society in the so-called Nevenka affair, on which the film is precisely based: “Ponferrada was a bit of us all, but the city staged it with the demonstrations, etc. ” she said yesterday. the author, who felt that “there would not have been more understanding in places like Barcelona, Madrid or Seville” at that time.
Bollaín thanked Zamora for his installations and addressed the intra-history of an audiovisual project facilitated by “the door they opened” Juan José Millás with his book on the case and, more recently, Ana Pastor with the Netflix documentary.
Despite everything, Nevenka Fernández, the real protagonist of the affair, “saw the entire filmography” of Bollaín and his co-writer, Isa Campo, before agreeing to collaborate on a project in which the actress Mireia Oriol plays his role: “I moved him a lot in the casting. He communicates and has fragility and strength. I believe that I can stand up to this man who was the king of Ponferrada”, explained the filmmaker, who referred to Ismael Álvarez, then mayor of the town of Bercia and convicted at the time of sexual harassment against Nevenka.
After the resolution of the case, Bollaín described it as “amazing” that the former municipal councilor of Ponferrada was able to obtain a favorable judgment “in a hostile and sexist context” that the director tried to show in the film with the nuances appropriate. : “The fact that she had a previous relationship with Ismael Álvarez and that she was beautiful, intelligent and had a charge made her consider herself ambitious and climber at the time. Now we understand consent, but not before,” he reflected.
Reception in Ponferrada
Returning to Ponferrada, Bollaín also highlighted that the reception in the cinemas of this city is good and that it even allows friends and family of Nevenka Fernández to interact with some spectators: “It generates a feeling of sadness , shame and reflection on how little we understood,” commented the director of the film, who revealed that Nevenka’s parents had already come to see this fiction based on their daughter’s life.
“They saw her yesterday and they were very happy and calm,” said Icíar Bollaín, confirming that Nevenka sought to convey this feeling to her parents after they were “hurt” by the portrait drawn in the book. Millás: “She was very alone when he left the plate and broke everything. At the time it was very difficult to understand”, insisted the filmmaker about the real protagonist of the story, who “now has a very good life with his family and an excellent job” after the horror of the affair.
