Carla Simón: "We always try to achieve equality, but perhaps mothers should have better conditions."

BarcelonaThe diary of a mother of whom she has few memories is the map that Mariana (newcomer Lucía Garcia Torras) uses in Pilgrimage to explore the memory of her biological parents, who died of AIDS when she was a young child. The new film by Carla Simón, which premieres this Friday, examines the silences and taboos that persist in the memory of a Galician family through the inquisitive eyes of a teenager who makes a pilgrimage to the sacred land (where her parents were young and happy) in search of their legacy. But Pilgrimage It is also a bittersweet invocation of the wandering spirits of a cursed and massacred generation, a cinematic act of poetic justice and personal dignity.

Pilgrimage It's inspired by the journey you took to meet your biological father's family. Has the story remained true to what actually happened, or does it inevitably deviate from reality when you fictionalize it?

— There's a lot of fiction in this film. I didn't make the trip when I was 18, and I didn't go to Galicia. I went to Madrid, to meet two of my uncles who lived there. I went to Galicia shortly afterward with my family, and I've since returned to meet the other side of the family. But I met my paternal grandparents in Barcelona, ​​because my grandfather was actually Catalan, despite living in Galicia. The family setup is very different, and the characters are highly fictionalized.

The film's protagonist discovers that her paternal family hides many secrets related to drugs and AIDS. In that sense, the film is an exercise in remembering a lost generation. Where does the need to recover it come from?

— The film was born from the frustration I feel because I don't know my parents' story, because they can't tell it to me directly. And this has made me reflect a lot on memory. And how it works is fascinating: when we remember, we don't remember what happened, but the last time we remembered it. And so we create a kind of telephone game inside our heads that transforms memories, often based on the story we need to tell ourselves to feel calmer.

You already said this about Summer 1993, which were not so much your memories as the memories of memories.

— Yes. Memory is unreliable, but mine is even less so, because there are many things I've sifted through the sieve of fiction. In the future, when I talk to my grandchildren, I won't know if I made them up to put them in a movie or if they really happened. Memory is subjective and selective, very difficult to control, even for oneself. And when reconstructing my parents' story, everyone told me things from their point of view, because we are the absolute protagonists of the memories we have. And this makes the pieces difficult to fit together. If my parents were still alive, they probably wouldn't explain to me exactly what happened either.

I guess this somehow legitimizes you to invent your parents' past, like you do in the movie.

— Of course, this is where fiction comes in. I spent the entire promotion ofSummer 1993 saying that memories couldn't be generated, that you can appropriate other people's stories but you can't generate new ones. And over time, I've realized that no, it would be a shame if I, who work in cinema, couldn't generate those memories. That's the power and magic of cinema: recreating those images I don't have and need, and even, in a way, resurrecting the dead.

In Pilgrimage the continuity of themes with is evident Summer 1993, but there are also elements ofAlcarràs, and not only for the choral portrait of a family, but a class perspective that vindicates the dignity of the subaltern classes.

— Yes. Furthermore, the topic of heroin and AIDS is often mistakenly associated with the lower classes, when in reality it's something that affected the entire society. This association surely has to do with the silence surrounding these issues. The more they are associated with the lower classes, the harder it is to accept the stigma and taboo it entails. Therefore, it was important for me to portray that this affected absolutely everyone and that these families experienced it with great difficulty.

I also said this because of the class differences between the protagonist and her father's family. In this sense, the scene in which the grandchildren queue up to receive their grandfather's tip seems very powerful to me and, in some ways, reminds me of a similar one in The Holy Innocents.

— Oh, yes, I remember now. It's the scene that happens in front of the house, right? The one where Pilgrimage It comes from my grandfather, not my paternal grandfather, but my maternal grandfather, who would line us up and give us an allowance. It was a moment he deeply enjoyed, because there was an element of power. And it's a scene many of us have experienced with grandparents who enjoy giving money to all their grandchildren. I hadn't experienced this with my paternal family, and they never gave me an envelope of money, like in the movie. But there's something about the act of distributing that money that marks a certain type of family and economic dynamic.

With Pilgrimage You say that you are closing the cycle of films about your family past, but I would say that the real epilogue was the short Letter to my mother for my son, despite being prior to Pilgrimage, especially because it incorporates your reality as a mother.

— Yes, it can. I feel like I made my first three films as a daughter, that is, as a new generation of a family. And this has changed now, because I have two young children. And it's true that perhaps the epilogue is Letter to my mother, because in relation to the other three films, it is the first time that I also speak from motherhood. Pilgrimage It also talks about motherhood, and certainly being a mother has influenced the making of it, but it is still a film made from the position of a daughter.

Pilgrimage You filmed it shortly after becoming a mother to Manolo, and now you're promoting it months after having Mila. Reconciliation was one of the issues that concerned you in the short letter you sent to Dominga Sotomayor. Correspondences.

— Balancing work and family life is incredibly difficult. It's hard for everyone, but I can't stop wondering how people without the resources will do it. In the end, I'm privileged because I can hire a babysitter and, furthermore, I'm very well supported, both by my parents and my in-laws, and by my partner, but it's still very difficult, basically because I'm so tired of doing everything. The world isn't set up for mothers to do everything. It's time to change the dynamics, but it's not easy because nowhere is it written down how to do it. Everything is somewhat burdensome and difficult. We always try to achieve equality, but there comes a point where you say: maybe mothers should have better conditions, because we spend nine months gestating, then breastfeeding, etc. It's very beautiful, but also a huge drain on energy. And yes, you can take sick leave, but I can't, and maybe sick leave isn't enough. All of this makes me think that perhaps mothers shouldn't have equal conditions, but rather more favorable conditions to be able to manage everything we have to do.

You worked with a psychologist specializing in dreams, Jordi Borràs, who advised you on the script. What was that collaboration like?

— I was very clear that I wanted the film to have an imaginary or dreamlike aspect, but I didn't really know how to approach it. And I was undergoing therapy, which was a kind of hypnosis called brain spotting to be able to recover memories about my mother, the transgenerational memory that you carry from previous generations without being aware of it. And I decided I wanted to dream more about my parents. While researching dreams, I went to talk to Jordi Borràs, who's an expert, and we did some therapy sessions about the dreams I had. And he gave me advice on dreaming about my parents, like putting a photo of them next to me and thinking about them before sleeping. It's truly fascinating to analyze your dreams, and I dream a lot.

The climax of the dream fugue of Pilgrimage It's a dance choreographed by Tuixén Benet. It's the moment of maximum artifice, the definitive break with realism. How did you arrive?

— I was trying to find a poetic image that would graphically and clearly summarize that this story wasn't just the story of two characters, but of an entire generation. And I thought, "What if we do it to the rhythm of Siniestro Total, which is also from Vigo?" It made sense.

And even more the song, I will dance on your grave.

— It made perfect sense. And I felt very comfortable and free to try new things and let loose to see where it took us. After all, that's the potential of cinema and its poetry.

If you had to tell the story of how a girl who grew up without biological parents became an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, what would be the first scene?

— It could be a game I loved as a child, which was spying on adults. It was a game we played when the adults were talking, and we would stand somewhere and eavesdrop on what they were saying, as if they couldn't see us. That curiosity to know about others, that slightly corset And this thing of observing comes to me from when I was little, and that is surely the basis of everything.

And what is your best memory related to cinema?

— This is a very difficult question. I don't know if it's the best answer, but one that left a deep mark on me was the day I discovered that cartoons didn't exist. As a child, I thought cartoons were a world that existed, that was somewhere, and that they filmed these movies there. Later, I realized that not everyone goes through this discovery and that some people understand it from the very beginning, but not me. And I wasn't so little anymore; I wasn't three years old, I was older. But when they told me this world didn't exist, it was a huge disappointment, on par with the Three Wise Men.

And the worst memory?

— Perhaps that would be the worst memory, because it made me realize that everything was a lie. And the best would perhaps be when we passed Summer 1993 For the first time in Berlin, and people came to thank me. For the first time, I felt that what had happened to me many times with other films—that need to thank someone because they had made me grow or moved me—was suddenly happening with one of my films. And it was very special, because I wasn't aware that I could achieve the same goal.

In the educational project Cine en Curso, in which you have collaborated intensely, one of the pedagogical tools is to project movie scenes to children to inspire them. What scene from Pilgrimage would you project them?

— Some of the imagined part of the film. In Cinema in Progress We have several categories on ways of filming and there is one called Emotion resonates in the landscapeAnd I remember going over the scenes that were there to inspire me, because there were some very beautiful scenes. And in some of the imagined scenes of Pilgrimage The characters relate to the landscape and could fall into this category. For example, when they're collecting clams on the beach, both of them together. This could be a beautiful scene to show children that would inspire something in them.