Set in Mallorca, Cata’s summer is drenched in sun and lazy promise—until it is violently rewritten by the absurd, sudden death of her grandmother, a death witnessed by her eyes alone. Unmoored by a grief no one else can truly understand, she seeks solace in a childhood habit: play-pretend. She slips into her grandmother’s clothes, her perfume, her posture, and not her baking abilities. A protagonist dealing with some unresolved issues, what we have in Spanish filmmaker Lucía Aleñar Iglesias‘ remarkable debut is a tale that blurs the lines, and crosses some lines — memory and presence shake up the dynamics of the family into a delicious, possibly dangerous disarray. Forastera announces the arrival of a fresh new voices in contemporary Spanish cinema.
On the last weekend of the this year’s Toronto Intl. Film Festival, I got to speak to Iglesias about her film – which won the prestigious FIPRESCI prize awarded to a debut feature film having its World Premiere in TIFF’s Discovery or Centrepiece programmes. We discussed the idea of “trying on” identity, the evolution and how Zoe Stein worked on her character, and the distilled visual language of the film. Look for Forastera to travel the film festival circuit for the next full year ahead. Here is our virtual sit down.
