It’s summer in a small village in southeastern Spain. A group of young people escape their boredom by partying and flirting. Meanwhile, the river threatens to burst its banks. A popular belief in the village then resurfaces: with each new flood, some women are destined to disappear.
Thus begins the story of director Elena López Riera’s first half-fantasy, half-documentary feature, “El agua”.
>> To watch: the trailer for the film “El agua”, subtitled in French
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Torn between transmission and emancipation
In the film, the character of Ana, (Luna Pamies), 17, is torn between the contemporary world and traditions. Like Elena López Riera, the young girl was raised by three generations of women and nurtured by local mythologies. “I was mostly raised by women: my mother, my grandmother, my neighbours. There was a very important community of women around me. I wanted to represent that through this film”, specifies to the RTS the director, who chose to shoot in her native village. “These beliefs accompanied me throughout my life in the village, until I was 18 when I left.”
The young woman then seeks to emancipate herself, in a course opposite to those of her mother and her grandmother, housewives. “But then I invented all the possible and imaginable pretexts to come back! She laughs. It’s the fracture of exile: we leave the village, but the village never leaves us. This contradiction animates me when I make movies.”
“El agua”, a film by Elena López Riera co-produced by RTS. [Alina Film / SUICAfilms / Les Films du Worso – RTS]
A local shoot
In “El agua” many roles are performed by non-professionals. “These are people living in the village. We supported each other in the preparation,” adds Elena López Riera. During the film, interludes show interviews with the director’s family. “This is the essence of the film, because it was born thanks to the words of these women. For me, there was no better way to pay homage to them than to show their free, dignified and frontal words.”
Director Elena López Riera now lives between Madrid and Switzerland, where she teaches cinema and comparative literature at the Haute École d’art et de design and at the University of Geneva. Before “El agua” in 2022, she directed three award-winning short films in Switzerland and Spain, “Pueblo” (2015), “Las Vísceras” (2016) and “Los que desean” (2018).
Interview by Julie Evard
Adaptation web: Myriam Semaani
“El agua”, to be seen from March 1, 2023 in French-speaking cinemas.