Madrid-based Latido Films has boarded Andalusian Sandra Romero’s “As Silence Passes By,” taking international sales rights to one of the most awaited Spanish debuts of 2024.
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Written by Romero, her first feature was announced last week as one of a first 10 titles confirmed for San Sebastian’s New Directors competition, its most impactful sidebar.
Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” “straddles the border between fact and fiction, enlisting real people to play poetically embellished versions of themselves in order to reach a deeper truth,” said a Variety review.
“As Silence Passes By” takes a similar route, reaping large dividends in an unyielding psychological authenticity and social knowingness.
It begins with Antonio, 32, who has carved out a life for himself in Madrid, returning to his deep Andalusia small town during the region’s Holy Week. He returns because it’s clear that his twin brother Javier is either no longer capable or unwilling to look after himself as his congenital kyphosis back problems worsen.
The twins and their sister are played by real life siblings Antonio, Javier and María Araque. “The structure is fiction, but its emotions real,” Romero told Variety. The film also includes near doc sequences, such as of María’s soul-destroying work in a local orange packaging factory.
“The depth we could work with is very difficult to achieve in classic fiction,” Romero argued .
The stark question facing Antonio and indeed his sister María is whether they should dedicate much of their foreseeable future looking after the insatiably attention-craving Javier.
Javier greets Antonio’s return by a night of pill-popping, cocaine snorting and alcohol-fuelled dancing at a local dive which leaves him unable to move. Given his future – major surgery, living with pins, in his body – he asks Antonio to allow him to live life intensely while he still can.
But he can’t, or would need Antonio’s nursing. He abandoned a care home. “They lumped us all together: Mental problems, the deaf, missing a leg. All of us together make a full person,” Javier jokes. He came out a wreck in body and mind,” he maintains. He discounts immediate major surgery.
“I’m very interested in the figure of the ‘bad ill person.’ It creates for me the same contradictions which Antonio feels in the film,” said Romero.
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Delivering a candid portrait of the huge challenge of co-dependency in lower income families, at the same time through sister María and their friends, the film also gives a highly non-romanticized vision of life in a small town. “I’m already tired and I’ll spend my life like this, says Fran, Javier’s ex girlfriend about her job of selling trinkets.
From Romero, “probably the most daring and challenging director of her generation, this film gives us, as no other film in Spain does nowadays, a window into the day-to-day life of small villages in the country,” said Latido Films head Antonio Saura.
Escapist fiction often proposes an extraordinary problem and shows ordinary people solving it. “As Silence Passes By” depicting an all too common problem which has no easy solution, the reality of co-dependency.
Directing, “I look for what in life can get into the film. I don’t conform with the structures of fiction and reality. I try to put on the screen what I understand as well as what I don’t know how to solve,” says Romero.
Production Details, and Latido’s Women Director Mission
Winner of the D’A Film Lab Prize at Barcelona’s D’A Festival, “As Silence Passes By” is produced by Madrid and Valencia-based Mammut (“Gunst ul vándrafoo”), now moving from shorts to features, and Andalusia’s Playa Chica Films (“Anatomía de un caballo”), both behind Romero’s short. Also producing are José Nolla’s classic production house Icónica, behind Toronto Fipresci prize winner “El Autor,” and Amaya Izquierdo’s Auna Producciones.
“The film merits all the plaudits: it is innovative, sometimes beautiful, sometimes harsh, delightful and painful at the same time, an amazing exposure to the real conflicts of a family,” says Saura.
“We are proud in Latido to continue supporting a generation of great female directors, last year with Rocío Mesa’s ‘Tobacco Barns,’ this year with Celia Rico’s ‘Little Loves,’” he added.
Latido also sold, of more recent films, Leticia Tonos Paniagua’s “Aire: Just Breathe,” Elena Trapé’s “The Enchanted” and Arantxa Echevarria’s Chinas.”
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