Júlia de Paz: "There were children who had panic attacks because they were forced to see their father"

BarcelonaThis Friday, "La buena hija" premiered in cinemas, by director Júlia de Paz (Sant Cugat del Vallès, 1995), which shows the consequences of vicarious violence and sexist violence on children, often unrecognized victims. And it does so through Carmela, a 12-year-old girl, who has to periodically go to a meeting point to meet her father, whom she idolizes. Little by little, however, the girl – and with her, the viewer – will discover who he really is and his way of exercising psychological violence.

Why this theme for your second film?

— It all started seven years ago because one of my friends was working at a family contact center. I had no idea what it was and she explained it to me from a point of frustration at having to comply with a law that, at many times, she didn't believe in. Because there were cases where she clearly saw that it wasn't a good idea for the child to see the parent, in this case the aggressor, but she had to comply with the law. And from there, with Núria Dunjó, who is the co-author of the film, we started visiting contact centers and interviewing women survivors of male violence. And what we found is that many of them shared a huge fear for their sons and daughters who, by not suffering physical or sexual violence, were not judicially considered victims of violence and had to continue seeing the parent. Since it is a violence, the psychological one, that is more difficult to prove, there is not enough support or resources to carry out a continuous assessment of these children. And the idea of the pater familias prevails, they don't want to break with this normative idea of family and the children have to keep seeing him. We started an investigation, which lasted 5 or 6 years, and the ignorance of asking ourselves if the situation of these children is really like this, is what led us to make the film La buena hija.

What situations did you witness? Did the children want to meet with their parents?

— There was everything, but it is true that we encountered many cases in which they did not want to, and, upon reaching the meeting point, they had panic attacks, they clearly said that they did not want to, and even so, it was forced that they had the visit.

We don't usually hear the voices of these children. Nor see them on screen.

— I think it's because an adult perspective is imposed on them. The value of their discourse and what they want is diminished. But it's also complicated for these sons and daughters to accept not wanting to see their father. It's very difficult to accept that a person you love can treat and violate you like that. And it's also because it's difficult to read certain violences because we have been educated to normalize and accept many violences, especially psychological ones, which are already part of the same macho system. In the end, placing the responsibility on this child to say 'I don't want to see my father' is a very big burden. But if there were accompaniment to truly see what is happening, then responsibility would also be taken away from them.

It is also difficult for adults sometimes to perceive psychological violence. What would it take to start understanding that it is also a form of violence?

— The answer lies in education and in extending what we understand as violence, that is, the limits of what is considered violence. We must consider who is deciding this catalog. We need to rethink what we have so far considered violence and what we have not.

In the film, the father, played by Julián Villagrán, is a character who can even be likeable until you realize what he is really like.

— We wanted the audience to take the same journey as Carmela, the daughter. That you can even empathize at certain moments with the father also to generate a certain discomfort in the audience, since little by little we are discovering who he is.

A question that the film raises is whether people like that can be good parents.

— Rather than answering yes or no, because in the end there are very different cases, I think we have to ask ourselves what kind of education and bond a person who relates through violence has with their son or daughter. I ask myself that more. What kind of bond will a person who understands love from the fear of abandonment, from control, from power, have with their son or daughter? What kind of education will they give them?

And what role do mothers have here?

— We found ourselves in a situation with quite a lot of conflict because mothers are the safety zone and this also causes it to be the space where sons and daughters project anger, guilt, frustration... it is a very complicated situation, both for the sons and daughters and for the mothers. If motherhood is already complicated, imagine a situation where you are emotionally broken, where there is a lack of resources... The bond is fragile, but at the same time also very strong, because in some way they already have very clear that they have to protect and care for these sons and daughters.

Has the male chauvinism violence been well represented in cinema?

— There are brutal films that talk about sexist violence, like Te doy mis ojos, or El bola, which are great references, and luckily they exist. But when we did research, we did miss the representation of psychological violence, which is harder to detect. And it's curious because we are finding in the discussions that there are people from the audience who don't see any violence in the film at all. I think this subsequent dialogue is what is interesting about this film: why are there people who don't see it as violence? And, precisely, we are making it for that and for the subsequent dialogue.

And what do they say?

— He is a normal guy, whom they see as narcissistic, but they don't consider him violent. They have made us believe what an abuser should be like, that he is someone like a cliché, and if he is not, then we no longer read him as an abuser. And violence goes much further.

How does the maturational process of these children affect?

— They are children who have to mature a lot earlier, who have to force their way into this adult world when it is not yet their turn, because, instead of living, they have to survive.

Carmela is in full adolescence, what kind of adolescence did you want to show on screen, also free of clichés?

— We didn't want the world of adolescence to have our adult perspective, that of Nuria and mine. We have revisited ourselves a lot with that age, and we have also given a lot of space to the same actresses who appear in the film so that they could incorporate their experience. We also did a lot of listening, for example, we paid close attention to conversations we heard on the metro, on the street, and we wrote them down. We have been very open to reconnecting with this adolescence so as not to give that adult perspective. And we wanted to show first love, smoking, singing, being with friends... It was important to also show this luminosity.

The bond between friends in the film is beautiful.

— Yes, this was a tribute to our friends. Because, in the end, for me, who has saved me from everything have been my colleagues.