Júlia de Paz: "It is difficult for a son to accept that he does not want to see his father"

BarcelonaThe Good Daughter, by director Júlia de Paz (Sant Cugat del Vallès, 1995), can now be seen in cinemas. It shows the consequences of vicarious violence and sexist violence on children, who are often unrecognized victims. And it does so through Carmela, a 12-year-old girl, who must periodically go to a meeting point to see 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 began 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 out of frustration because there were cases where she clearly saw that it was not 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 here, with Nuria Dunjó, who is the co-author of the film, we visited contact centers and interviewed women survivors of gender-based 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. As it is a violence, the psychological one, more difficult to prove, there is not enough support or resources to make a continued assessment of these children. And the idea of the pater familias prevails, there is a desire not to break with this normative idea of family and the children have to continue 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.

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

— There was everything, but it is true that we encountered many cases where they did not want to, and, upon arriving at 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 are not used to hearing the voices of these children. Nor seeing them on screen.

— I think it's because an adult perspective is imposed on them. Their discourse and what they want are devalued. 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 someone you love can treat you and violate you like that. And also because it's difficult to recognize certain violences because we have been educated to normalize and accept many violences, especially psychological ones, which are already part of the same sexist system. In the end, placing the responsibility on that child to say I don't want to see my father is too much. But if there were support to really see what's 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 movie, the father, played by Julián Villagrán, is a character who can even be likable until you realize what he's 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 as well to generate a certain discomfort in the audience, as little by little we discover who he is.

A question the film poses to you 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 should ask ourselves what kind of education and bond a person who relates through violence has with their son or daughter. I ask myself this more. What kind of bond will a person who understands love through fear of abandonment, through control, through power, have with their son or daughter? What education will they give them?

And what role do mothers have here?

— We find that it is a situation with considerable conflict because mothers are the safety zone and that also causes it to be the space where sons and daughters project their anger, guilt, frustration... it is a very complicated situation, both for the sons and daughters and for the mothers. If motherhood is complicated now, 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 they are very clear that they must protect and care for these sons and daughters.

Has gender-based violence been well represented in cinema?

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

And what do they say?

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

How does the maturational process of these infants affect them?

— They are children who have to mature much 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 the midst of 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 gaze, Nuria's and mine. We did revisit ourselves a lot with that age, and we also gave a lot of space to the same actresses who appear in the film to incorporate their experience. We also did a lot of listening, for example, we paid close attention to conversations we overheard on the subway, on the street, and we wrote them down. And we wanted to show first love, smoking, singing, being with friends... It was important to also show this luminosity.

It's a beautiful bond that exists between friends in the movie.

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