Isabel Peña and Isabel Campo, the best screenwriters in Spain: "Writing is a political act"

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To say of two men that they are the best at something instinctively, unthinkingly, marks them as at the top of the class regardless of gender.

Saying the same thing about two women inevitably leads to one of those grammatical labyrinths without explanation or, better, in need of a second clarification of, precisely, gender.

Let's put the sentence:

What do you mean exactly?

The name of the two was heard last Thursday at the headquarters of the Film Academy.

The first, born in 1975, is a Goya candidate for her work in

the film by Isaki Lacuesta that recomposes the void in the lives of two survivors after the Bataclan attack in Paris and that adapts the autobiographical book by Ramon Gonzalez.

The second, from 1983, opted for the award for the writing of

, Rodrigo Sorogoyen's film already elevated to the category of phenomenon for its 17 nominations and for everything else.

"The truth is that something like the Goya helps a lot," says the first.

, correct, modest, the second.

They are both screenwriters and it is not the first time they have seen each other in something similar.

The first came very close last year for

, by Icíar Bollaín, and the second already has a statuette at home for

also by Sorogoyen.

The two, by the way, coincided in the

series .

And so.

The filmmaker Isabel Campo. VALERIO RIOJA

Campo tells that he came to the trade because of things of time, in its most abstract meaning.

She, before even falling into writing,

A typical combination of Pythagoras.

Or Hypatia of Alexandria.

«When Isaki (Lacuesta) was shooting

In San Fernando, Cádiz, I was writing my thesis on how photography has modified the very concept of time”, he clarifies time by time.

It was like this, first as a temporary collaborator of the one she was and is still her partner and then full time and without remedy, the first Isabel ended up dedicating herself to composing the stories that later end up on the screen.

And despite everything, and her affection for the abstract, hers, she says, is not to write from scratch, but to do it with the help of the film itself.

«I get involved in each process, I go to the casting and I am always willing to rewrite whatever is necessary depending on the shooting, the director, the actors... the time».

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The story of the second Elizabeth is more concrete, closer to the ground.

She is the daughter of a "cinephagous" father (her expression is hers) and she spent her entire childhood pending the screen, any of them.

«Mine is more conventional.

I saw that the cinema was an unattainable dream, so

which is an intermediate and super cowardly option.

Then I went to Audiovisual Communication and finally I ended up, in small steps, at the Madrid Film School (ECAM).

Finally », she recalls.

And smile.

he says in an effort to define his own.

And he continues: «You try to make what you tell be as truthful as possible out of simple responsibility with reality.

The world is there and if you want to talk about it so that it changes you even have to fully understand it.

You have to stick with it."

I am afraid that cinema directed by women will stop being commercial, that we will stop being a trend and that we will go back"

isabel pena

In the last explanation, to which Campo agrees, perhaps one of those characteristics that determine an entire generation, today's, theirs, is missing.

If the films that have surprised this year could be defined by anything

, it is because of their veristic spelling, their commitment to truth.

It is valid for the films that they have written and it is the same for

or

, to mention the obvious.

«What has changed is the very convention of what is understood by realism.

I think of what Marc Recha or José Luis Guerín did before us from perhaps the underground and I recognize that that magma has borne fruit, ”the former now tells.

Both of them have become the most graphic example of this new revolution underway, that of verismo.

And, in a much more evident way, of the other:

Campo says that it is important that things stop being as they have been to be in another way that is more fair, balanced, egalitarian.

«It is important that what is happening happens even if it is only for visibility.

Before there were Isabel Coixet and Icíar Bollaín and there were no more.

The fact that my 9-year-old daughter can say the names of ten female directors opens up a world of possibilities for her

and without having the unconscious suspicion that you are getting into a world that is not yours».

The statement is from Field.

And he continues: «On the other hand, and beyond the fact that the stories change because the experiences can be different, when telling the usual from another experience, from the relationship with other women, the stories that come out are different.

We all win in diversity.”

I especially like to write.

I'm not one of those people who needs public exposure.

The extra subtracts me from working

Elizabeth Field

And it is now when Peña remembers his childhood again in front of his beloved film noir.

«When I watched the movies with my father, they were all directors, all the stories were about gangsters and mobsters...

I would have loved to have had a girl's perspective now."

Campo takes the floor: «What has been broken this year is a rule that condemned women to make a first film with a tiny budget and then disappear because they could not raise a second, more ambitious project.

"What scares me," Peña replies now, "is that this trend will stop being commercial.

Now the producers look for female directors, but they do it because it's viable.

Campo says that he does not write differently if he does it for one director or another.

Peña replies that for her the basic thing is always history and that everything is at her service.

She tells Isabel, the first, that she doesn't need public exposure, that she just likes to write, that the extra thing she gets from working.

Answers the second Isabel who lives in the permanent contradiction of longing to be recognized, but without being bothered.

The first is now with the next film by Icíar at the same time that he is preparing a series for Movistar without neglecting "the rundown" of the next one by Isaki.

"There are many projects, but each one has its place," he says.

"Ah, not forgetting my next endeavor, but now as a director. We'll see."

The second does not breathe: in the morning she writes a new series and in the afternoon she turns to the next Sorogoyen.

"They both take their first steps: the most exciting ones," she says.

They talk and

They speak and write.

They write and do not stop.

Let's put the sentence: «Isabel and Isabel (Isabel Campo and Isabel Peña) are the two best screenwriters in Spanish cinema».

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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