When we talk about the pioneers of Spanish cinema, we always cite two groups of directors. The first, formed by those who started it all, Cecilia Bartolomé, Josefina Molina and even Pilar Miró; and the second, those who obtained the first prizes and recognitions, with Icíar Bollaín and Isabel Coixet as great references. However, and although they all are, among these names and the new generation of Spanish filmmakers who have revolutionized our industry, there is one who is not always highlighted as it should be. This is not always placed in the place it deserves when reviewing the recent history of Spanish cinema, and here is one of the great novelties, in Catalan.
Mar Coll was a great reference for all those who came after, but she was a quieter, even more obscure reference. However, when you ask all the new Spanish directors winning awards around the world about the people who inspired them and made them realize that this was possible, Mar Coll’s name comes up. Because in her, they saw a young woman, who made her debut at less than 30 years old and who made a cinema that was unlike anything we had seen.
The arrival of Three days with familypresented for the first time at the age of 27 at the Malaga Festival (where she won the silver Biznaga for best direction), was an earthquake for many women. It was an intimate and political story, the deconstruction of a bourgeois Catalan family who spoke, surprisingly, in Catalan, which even attracted criticism in 2009. She would later win the Goya for best new director and become one of great promises of the film. Spanish cinema. He is now 43 years old.
What few people knew then was that it was much more than a promise, it was a paradigm shift which was confirmed with We all want the best for her (2013) and one of the most personal series created with the fiction boom in Spain, Kill the father (2018). Since then, the pandemic and motherhood have passed, and all this has been consolidated in her new film Hail Mary. A realistic and unfiltered look at motherhood which is one of the great Spanish films of the year.
“I want to do this”
The films that change us are those that remind us of the exact moment we saw them, and that’s what happened to Carla Simón with Three days with family. She was studying for a master’s degree and at that time she was in Barcelona. I already had the idea of making films, but I didn’t even know where to take the first step. When she left the room, something had changed inside her. “I remember going out and crying. I came home and called my mom and said, “I want to do this.” It gave me the possibility to believe that as a young woman and a woman, you could make a film about your own family experiences and in Catalan. There were so many points in common with what I wanted that it was really very revealing and very enlightening,” says the director of Alcarras during the editing of his new film, Pilgrimage.
For her, the references are obviously numerous, but she believes that Mar Coll “started something that has to do with our generation of filmmakers” and that “we talk little about her”. “When I think of the guy who started it all, his name always comes to mind,” he adds. Mar Coll had the same importance in Belén Funes, in this case as clearly as the director of A Thief’s Daughter He worked for the first time in a film thanks to Mar Coll. He had just left university and started filming Three days with family. “For me, leaving university and seeing a young woman at the helm of a film, that was everything,” she says emphatically.
I remember walking out of his movie and starting to cry. It gave me the possibility to believe that you could be a woman, young, and make a film about your own family experiences in Catalan.
Carla Simon
— Director
For her, there were two fundamental moments in realizing that she wanted to become a filmmaker. The first, when he saw “that Isabel Coixet was in one of the lists of nominees for best director at the Goyas”, the second, when he started filming with Mar Coll. “I expected the directors to be something else, and suddenly I arrive at the office of Escándalo Films, which was the producer of the film, and I find a super short, super young, super close aunt, who has a thousand doubts, but at the same time Maybe she is very clear about the film she is making, what she has to do, how she has to rehearse, how she has to direct the actors, have her voice and show it clearly. the right way, surrounded by super young like her who made the film… yes, that wouldn’t have happenedr Three days with family I don’t know if I would realize it now,” he adds.
Filmmaker, woman… and in Catalan
For Elena Trapé, Mar Coll’s cinema has discovered something “new and interesting”, and she believes that it “redefines what Catalan cinema means or what Catalan cinema and in Catalan can be”. Trapé is a little older than Mar Coll, since he studied another career before coming to the cinema, but he studied a promotion below at ESCAC. He already remembers the power of Coll’s short films. Of Three days with family underlines the importance of the fact that “it was a film in Catalan, entirely in Catalan”. When he came to see her, he thought it might be his family. “That’s my grandfather,” he said.
He remembers an anecdote that clearly demonstrates the political power of this premiere in his language: “It was the first film in Catalan that was in Malaga, and at that moment there were people leaving the theater because it was screened in its original version. . “At that time, he was one of the first. I ride blog the year after March and we do not dare to do it in Catalan. Some girls in the film actually stayed behind because they did not know how to improvise in Spanish. They were visible. So we had to make sacrifices at that level,” he recalls and underlines how he made these eminently Catalan experiences “something very universal in terms of cinematographic language”.
Nely Reguera also worked on this film as an assistant director. I had participated in bigger productions like The perfume, But suddenly, she finds herself in a film “which represents the cinema” that she loves and that she dreams “of making one day”. “Of course it was important. In fact, shortly after finally deciding to make Pablo, my short In my case, there was already a desire to become a director. I don’t think I realize because I participated in Three days with family, But it was important to see that the cinema that I loved and that I intended to make was being made, that it was being made by a woman and that she was doing it well,” she says, also emphasizing the the importance of being filmed in Catalan when few people have done it. What stands out about her is “the sensitivity and lucidity of her look, on which she emphasizes when she describes the. society, human beings and the way we behave and to interact.”
A support network is formed between everyone, which also has a lot to do with ESCAC, but which is not exclusive. These women, who arrived later (a little or a lot), help each other in everything. They read their scripts, see the first cuts and have broken with many (male) stereotypes about competitiveness in cinema. Everyone, when asked about Mar Coll, points out that another name is also mentioned, generally less mentioned. It’s Valentina Viso’s. She is co-writer of all the works of Mar Coll, the second part of an infallible tandem which is also responsible for the scenarios of some of them, such as Maria (and the others) either Summer 1993. Without Mar and Valentina, Spanish cinema that opened up new themes and perspectives would be very different, and much worse.
