Rodrigo Sorogoyen: "The awards are unfair, the void for 'Alcarràs' is absurd"

In six feature films, Rodrigo Sorogoyen (Madrid, 1981) has completed a filmography that is as electric as it is transparent; visceral and relaxed at the same time. As bestas is the best...

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Interview with Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, Pilar Palomero, Alberto Rodríguez and Carla Simón Los Goya of the new Spanish cinema: "Making films is no longer a matter of the rich upper class"

In six feature films,

Rodrigo Sorogoyen

(Madrid, 1981) has completed a filmography that is as electric as it is transparent;

visceral and relaxed at the same time.

As bestas

is the best summary of a way of understanding cinema capable of going from one extreme to another without breaking, from the feverish nerve of

El reino

to the introspection of

Madre

And to raise faith in the achievement, the nine Goya awards won at the gala on Saturday in Seville which, incidentally, make it the benchmark for a generation that has made 2022 its place to run.

At six in the morning on Sunday, he says, he began to understand what was happening.

"Until that moment, too many things happened and they all happened too fast," he says, now rested (or almost) and back at his house in Madrid.

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Goya Awards 2023.

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The 'chungo' Luis Zahera achieves his second Goya as best supporting actor

Goya Awards 2023.

Denis Ménochet, the 'gabacho' who has conquered the Goya

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Denis Ménochet, the 'gabacho' who has conquered the Goya

Does yesterday's success mean that the future starts now? In a way, yes.

It is impossible to avoid the feeling that what has happened with this film means a full stop.

And not just for success and stuff.

Aesthetically or stylistically, Isabel Peña (the screenwriter) and I feel that we have already reached a place.

Now we want to do something completely different.

We are, in fact, working on it. What is your assessment of the list of winners? It is proof that the prizes are unfair.

It is unfair that Alcarràs did not take anything.

More than unfair it is completely absurd.

In a year that has seen so many and so many different movies, it's ridiculous that everything is concentrated in just one.

If two.

It is important that neither the public nor us nor the media believe or imply that only award-winning films are worthwhile.

The strangest thing is that the same Film Academy that chooses 'Alcarràs' for the Oscars later ignores it as it has done. It's strange.

Everything is very relative.

It has to do with the moment in which one thing is voted and another.

It is a failure in the system and the voting date, without a doubt. Perhaps it is time, because of all this at the end of the journey, to look back, far back.

He is the grandson of the director Antonio del Amo, a filmmaker retaliated under Francoism and with a very interesting body of work that ranges from Joselito's commitment to folkloric cinema.

What relationship do you have with him? I have to admit that it costs me a lot.

More than complicated, my relationship with him is confusing, I would say.

For reasons that are irrelevant, my relationship with my grandfather throughout my life has been very limited, I won't say zero.

I've started to see his movies and take an interest in him when he's older.

AND,

Without a doubt, it is a pending subject, it is a topic to be developed and analyzed.

I know there is something there that I have to explore.

I imagine that I will dare to make a film about him or about him at some point. Does the old project, canceled for the moment, about the Civil War have to do with him? Yes, without a doubt.

I won't say it's a tribute to him at all.

But the Civil War interests me very much and I will return to it.

My grandfather lived and suffered the conflict in a central way and I imagine that is there at the bottom of my interest. Doesn't it make you apprehensive, I won't say scary, to insist on the Civil War because of the stigma attached to Spanish cinema? No, the other way around.

What is being said is an argument as fallacious as it is poor.

The need to insist on the Civil War is evident.

You have to return to it as many times as necessary until it is counted,

understand and assimilate what happened.

And once this is done, one part of this country will have to ask for forgiveness and the other will have to see and reflect on whether it wants or can forgive.

An honest movie or series about the race, I am convinced that it will interest a lot of people.

And that is the meaning of cinema and of any art: to arouse interest from the truth. We return to 'As bestas'.

The film has ended up being as French as it is Spanish.

And I'm not talking about the production but about its audience, its field of communication and interest, so to speak.

Is this the new path that is being talked about so much? Perhaps.

Or yes directly.

But it is a mistake to plan that as if it were a product to sell here and there.

The key is that we creators work in freedom.

If a project is raised from the truth, it reaches everyone.

The idea is not to break borders or anything like that.

The borders, let's say, that break alone.

And I do believe that this freedom is more present among those of us who make films now.

I imagine that Saura acted in the same way. Another possible characteristic that unites them is that they have all gone through film schools, there is very little self-taught... Yes, and I don't think it's bad.

Far from unifying ways of doing things or languages, each exhibits its own teachers and their schools.

What I do see the most and what I identify with the most is the passion that everyone shows and that it is not difficult for me to make my own.

We have all made our passion our trade.

And we all have a reverential respect for what we do.

We are very aware of the privilege it is to do what we do.

I see people who are very conscientious and conscientious about the trade and that permeates what is told and what is seen.

And the irruption of the platforms?

Many of you have made movies and TV.

To what extent does the second not pervert the first? It is a danger, without a doubt.

We must not lose sight of the fact that a good part of the platforms, I will not say all, work with algorithms.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that's what their business is, it's not creating anything new, but repeating what works a thousand times over.

They know what works (or think they do) and they hire you to do a very specific thing.

I'm tired of remembering it, but in a conversation with a TV executive I heard him say that in a series something significant happened every three minutes and every six, memorable.

On that basis, what is done is very limited.

And, on the other hand, what is pernicious is to confuse that way of working with the way of working;

the problem is believing that this is the way to do things.

And this trend is dangerous because of the homogenization it causes.

It is also true that the market is so plural that there are platforms that hire you to make your films, they want you, not a product.

Go one way or the other. Was that what happened with the Civil War series? No, no.

It was something else that happened.

I have already talked a lot about the series and I do not want to insist.

We will return to it. The colored nails with the trans flag... It seemed appropriate for solidarity and visibility.