Juan Antonio Bayona

What did you especially like in Hierro? I met Gabe Ibañez after watching his short film Máquina, which I found fascinating. From that moment, I started to be on his trail, because I noticed his huge sensory capacity. I thought that he had the makings of a cineaste. When I finally saw Hierro, it lived up to all my expectations.

Being a movie that you are sponsoring - together with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, which points has it got in common with your own cinema, or your way of thinking about cinema? We belong to a very eclectic generation of filmmakers who grew up watching a lot of American and European cinema, so we try to keep the best of both cinematographic typologies. But it is quite difficult to try classifyng us because Fresnadillo and I are actually very different.

How was the selection process? How many films did you watch? We were looking for a film which was able to represent the kind of cinema we both do, so the selection finally got reduced to just a few titles.

Did the organization set any requirement about how the movie had to be? They agreed with the idea that we should represent a whole generation of Latin filmmakers but they didn’t set any kind of requirement, they gave us absolute freedom.

Did you both completely agree about the final decision? Yes, yes, absolutely. Juan Carlos and I watched all the films that fit with our way of making and thinking about cinema - we also tried to watch in film format as many movies as we could, and we agreed completely. Besides, the Semaine de la Critique is one section which seeks to introduce new talents, and both of us think that Gabe Ibañez shows promise.

Hierro has lots of similarities with The Orphanage: a mother who suffers the loss of a son and who denies the truth because it’s so harsh to face; did you like Hierro because of this? When we made The Orphanage, we were faced with that problem. Scary movies deal with the same topics, but further than that they don’t look similar at all. Gabe Ibañez’s capacity to transmit emotions and sensations is really huge, I’m pretty sure that he’s going to get people talking.

In The Orphanage, you decided to make an open ending, letting the spectator decide by himself. What do you think about the way that Gabe Ibañez has settled his story? I think that his option is as suitable as mine. The dialogue that arises between the movie and the spectator is very interesting, and it’s the director who gives the guidelines. Gabe Ibañez’s ending is very coherent.

Almodóvar and Amenábar aside, it seems that the Spanish movies which are reaching more international audiences are the horror or fantasy ones. What do you think about this last genre in particular? This genre, by its own characteristics, doesn’t have any kind of restriction. It isn’t limited by reality, so there’s a place for everything. Even in fantasy movies, the plot doesn’t always look fantastical. And that’s something that joins all the people we work with.

Andrea Franco