Rodrigo Sorogoyen at San Sebastian Festival 2016
By Cineuropa News.

The San Sebastian Festival is the most important festival in the Spanish-speaking world. The Official Selection is its core section, with a selection of films of the year produced worldwide which vie for the Golden Shell. Emerging talents can be discovered at the New Directors section, a competition of first or second films, whereas Horizonte’s Latinos is a showcase of the year’s Latin America production, being the Industry Club is the meeting point for professionals. In 2016 the Donostia Awards will be granted to Ethan Hawke and Sigourney Weaver and Gael Garcia Bernal will receive the Jaeger-LeCoultre Latin Cinema Award.

Rodrigo Sorogoyen • Director “You have to reflect a frustration one way or another”
by Alfonso Rivera

“Every film is a world of its own”

06/10/2015 - The Madrilenian filmmaker (Stockholm) is banking on two acting heavyweights, Antonio de la Torre and Roberto Álamo, in this tense thriller
Stockholm , which was presented at the Malaga Film Festival in 2013, pocketed a never-ending string of national awards (including a Goya nomination) and international prizes, and re-established the name Rodrigo Sorogoyen (Madrid, 1981) among the new talents to keep an eye on on the current Spanish film scene. That is why his third oeuvre (the first was 8 Dates, which he went halves on with Peris Romano) is currently hotly anticipated. Que Dios nos perdone (lit. “God Forgive Us”) is a tense crime thriller in which Antonio de la Torre (Marshland, Cannibal) and Roberto Álamo (The Skin I Live In, Gordos ) each play police inspectors, one of whom is a shy stutterer, while the other is brash and given to extremes; they will be supported by Mónica López, Luis Zahera, Rocío Muñoz-Cobo and José Luis García Pérez.

‘Que Dios nos perdone’ has been written by the director himself, together with Isabel Peña, a partnership that has been struck up once again following the unnerving Stockholm. It tells the story of how, in the scorching summer of 2011, with the rampant socio-economic crisis in full swing and the 15-M movement gaining momentum, the Papal visit to Madrid is being organized, which entails the arrival of 1.5 million believers. In the midst of this chaotic, strained and aggressive atmosphere, police officers Alfaro and Velarde must find a serial killer as soon as possible, and without arousing suspicions or causing alarm. During their investigation, both men will discover something they had never suspected, something they had never even thought of: perhaps they themselves are not as different from the killer as they had hoped.

After Sorogoyen used a cooperative system to get Stockholm off the ground, he is now able to bank on production by none other than Tornasol Films, Atresmedia Cine, Mistery Producciones AIE and Hernández y Fernández PC. The shoot is taking place in Madrid, Cantabria and Tenerife. As was the case in his previous movie, this film will again see Sorogoyen tackling the most violent side of human relations.


10/07/2015 - Expectations are high for the new thriller by the acclaimed director of Marshland, starring José Coronado, Marta Etura and Eduard Fernandez in the lead roles
In Paris on 20 July, the starting pistol will be fired for the shoot of El hombre de las mil caras (lit. “The Man with a Thousand Faces”), an eagerly anticipated movie, following the tremendous success of Marshland, the previous work by its director, Alberto Rodriguez. After it was screened at the 2014 San Sebastian Film Festival, Marshland became an unstoppable phenomenon that managed to win over critics, the general public and jury members alike. Now, Seville-born Rodriguez will direct two leading figures of the acting world: José Coronado and Eduard Fernandez, who will rub shoulders with the beautiful and talented Marta Etura.

As was the case for Marshland, the filmmaker is once again working with a winning crew: Alex Catalan will be back serving as DoP, the editing will be handled by José M G Moyano, Julio de la Rosa will take care of the soundtrack, production design will be managed by Pepe Dominguez and the wardrobe by Fernando Garcia. The screenplay is co-written by Rodriguez and Rafael Cobos, and is based on the book Paesa, el espía de las mil caras (“Paesa: The Spy with a Thousand Faces”) by Manuel Cerdán.

The ambitious shoot will last almost three months, and will take place in Paris, Singapore, Geneva and Madrid. The movie will portray the shady dealings of secret agent Francisco Paesa (played by Fernandez), who enjoyed life just like James Bond, was an arms dealer, lived on the edge, faked his own death and played a central role in handing over Luis Roldán (to be played by Carlos Santos) to the police; Roldán was the former managing director of the Spanish military police, who had been caught up in a corruption scandal.
17/09/2016 - SAN SEBASTIAN 2016: After the success of Marshland, Seville director Alberto Rodriguez is back with an ambitious political thriller, Smoke and Mirrors, based on true events.

'Smoke and Mirrors' has just had its world premiere in competition at the 64th San Sebastian Film Festival, a week before it is released in Spain. Forty-something Seville director Alberto Rodriguez’s previous film Marshland, which was also selected for the Basque festival two years ago and took home two awards (Best Actor for Javier Gutierrez and Best Photography for Alex Catalan) received huge acclaim from audiences, critics and juries, so hopes are high for this new thriller.

Cineuropa: In our last interview, just before Marshland was released, you said that you already had Smoke and Mirrors in the pipeline.

Alberto Rodriguez: It’s a project I’ve been waiting to do for a long time, an almost ill-fated project that was pitched to Enrique Urbizu and others first. When he turned it down, they handed the reins over to me, just as I was finishing Unit 7 . Sadly, we weren’t able to secure funding and the project was put on hold. It started back up again when money and opportunities came flowing in. So in the end, the film took years and years of work, but for me, it was all worth it. It was also the professional change that I was looking for, as this project doesn’t have much in common with the previous one and it’s very difficult, after such huge success, to repeat such a special experience, so I saw a good opportunity here to do this for myself and go in a new direction.

The film was also made on a big budget.
The story, which is very complex, called for a big budget, because it unfolds in a number of different locations. In an ideal world, we could have even done with a bit more money, as is always the case. They had me read the book by Manuel Cerdán, Paesa: el espía de las mil caras, as I only had a vague recollection of the affair. What really stood out for me is that even though the story takes place in 1994, as I read the text I realized that the whole thing could just as easily be happening in 2011. I liked that aspect of it, as well as the stir that the Roldán affair caused and the little known details that the book presents, above all the fact that people only dimly recall the Paesa and Rodán affair: they remember it as it has gone down in collective memory, skewed and altered.

What did you have to lose, adapt or modify from the book in the film?
A lot of things, because the book is a journalistic text, whilst for us, it was about creating a piece of fiction based on true events. We had to build a fictional story with a central subject. During the documentation stage, we naively tried to come up with something that would seem real, but we soon realized that that was impossible. The number of versions provided by people we interviewed and by books we had read on the subject led us to conclude that nobody, with the exception perhaps of three or four individuals, knew the real story, and we would never be the exception. So my co-screenwriter Rafael Cobos and I decided to tell a story that could have happened. A lot of the events happened as we tell them, and were well-documented, but we invented others, because we wanted to convey what happened, not make a documentary. It’s a story that someone tells you, or rather a story full of all the truth and lies that come with any story.

For this film you reunited the team you worked with on Marshland.
Yes, the team has stayed practically the same ever since my debut film, The Pilgrim Factor. It has simply grown as my films have become more complicated.

Is it an imposition that a project as huge as Smoke and Mirrors requires shots in so many foreign countries?
Yes, it’s complicated. We worked places we’d never been to into the screenplay. You can gather together as much information as you like about a place, but the reality on the ground is always surprising. For example, in Singapore, I was expecting to see a clear blue sky, but ended up finding myself in a huge city with giant buildings that block out the light before it can even get to you. In Malaysia, they burn the fields, which creates so much smoke that it leaves a dreadful permanent fog: that’s why in the film it always looks overcast. In each place, the team was different, but that taught me a lot, because in the end, every film is a world of its own.

18/09/2016 - SAN SEBASTIAN 2016: Madrilenian director Rodrigo Sorogoyen is competing in the official section with May God Save Us, a thriller starring Antonio de la Torre and Roberto Álamo.
Three years ago, Madrilenian director Rodrigo Sorogoyen surprised audiences at the Malaga Film Festival with Stockholm, a real anti-romance of a film starring Javier Pereira and Aura Garrido, which netted three awards, including Best Director. Before that, he teamed up with Peris Romano to make 8 Dates, a movie made up of mini romantic tales. With his third, unwholesome but magnificent feature, May God Save Us , which is in competition at the 64th San Sebastian Film Festival, he makes the leap into the premier league of Spanish filmmakers, proving he is one to watch closely over the coming years.
Cineuropa: Your film has a number of elements in common with Marshland by Alberto Rodriguez – who you’re going up against at this edition of the festival, where he is presenting Smoke & Mirrors – including some mysterious crimes and Antonio de la Torre, an actor who seems to be omnipresent at the moment (he appears to be trying his hand at everything in Spain).

Rodrigo Sorogoyen: That’s what people say, but José Coronado and Luis Tosar have more acting jobs than him (laughs). The thing is that Antonio is currently in The Fury of a Patient Man by Raúl Arévalo. I don’t mind competing against Alberto Rodriguez; it scares me more going up against foreign filmmakers, with that misguided and magnified view we usually have of films that come from elsewhere. But Smoke & Mirrors will be a hell of a film; I think of him more as a brother because he’s from here, too.

Speaking of Raúl Arévalo, who worked with you as an actor in 8 Dates, your film is much like his The Fury of a Patient Man in that it portrays a violent environment: you both depict society from an angry point of view… Coincidence?

There are not usually any coincidences when it comes to this: there must be a frustration that needs to be reflected one way or another… In my case there is, and I guess there is in Raúl’s case as well, since his film hinges more on revenge. But for me it stems from Madrid, where, as is also the case in other Western cities, people are living alongside violence or, at certain moments, are at the very centre of it: Isabel Peña, my co-screenwriter, and I were neighbors, and we saw how in summer 2011, the Papal visit and the 15M movement were happening right at the same time as police were beating people up left, right and centre. The powers that be stopped you from camping out or protesting in the street, but on the other hand, they welcomed half a million pilgrims with open arms, plus a Pope whose expenses were not to the liking of all Madrilenians: this sparked such an amount of violence that the idea of portraying it just came to us. So the screenplay came about as a result of our anthropological interest in knowing why a man would slit another man’s throat, and even as a result of our socio-political curiosity to depict a city and a specific moment in time: this all came together, and we wrote a thriller about two policemen who have to catch a killer.

You began with 8 Dates, sharing directing duties, then you got Stockholm off the ground with a crowd funding scheme that raised €60,000, and now you have a bigger budget and Gerardo Herrero on board as a producer. This has been quite a step forward, but have certain important things got left behind along the way?
I was worried about losing freedom: I was getting ready to put up a fight – politely – to hold onto as much freedom as possible, but I had a lot. I don’t know if it’s because I was careful, because they trusted me or because the stars came into alignment. I made the movie I wanted to make. And I had it easier than on Stockholm, because on that film I was the producer, and then I had lots of things to worry about, whereas now I’ve devoted myself to directing: this is bigger, more complete and took longer, so that freedom was very good for me.

Did they not tell you there were lines you couldn't cross when it came to the levels of violence?
That wasn’t my experience: the script is violent, whether you like it or not; in fact, one French distributor purposely didn’t buy it for that very reason. Then there was the little voice in my head that warned me not to take it too far, but no lines were drawn: we walked hand in hand with those in control. Not that the film is an ode to violence; it has its gritty moments, but it could have been a lot more brutal.
You shot in the Canary Islands as well as in Madrid.
Yes, because of the tax relief you get there. We filmed the interiors of the houses and the police station there. We also shot in Torrelavega (Cantabria): that’s where the final scene of May God Save Us unfolds.

‘May god save us’ a film by Rodrigo Sorogoyen
synopsis
En Madrid, durante el verano de 2011, la crisis económica ha agitado a la sociedad, provocando la llegada del movimiento 15-M. Además, miles de peregrinos llegan a la calurosa capital para esperar al Papa. En este contexto los policías Alfaro y Velarde deben atrapar a un presunto asesino de manera discreta. Pero la presión y la carrera contra reloj les hará darse cuenta de una verdad terrible: quizá ninguno de los dos es tan distintos del criminal al que persiguen.

international title: May God Save Us
original title: Que Dios nos perdone
country: Spain
sales agent: Latido Films
year: 2016
genre: fiction
directed by: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
release date: ES 28/10/2016
screenplay: Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Isabel Peña
cast: Antonio de la Torre, Roberto Álamo, Josean Bengoetxea, Monica Lopez, Luis Zahera, Rocío Muñoz, José Luis García Pérez, Ciro Miró
cinematography by: Alejandro de Pablo
film editing: Alberto del Campo, Fernando Franco
art director: Miguel Ángel Rebollo
costumes designer: Paola Torres
music: Olivier Arson
producer: Mercedes Gamero, Gerardo Herrero, Mikel Lejarza
production: Tornasol Films, Atresmedia Cine, Mistery Producciones AIE, Hernández y Fernández Producciones Cinematográficas
backing: Atresmedia, Movistar+, Telemadrid, ICAA - Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales
distributor: Warner Bros. Spain