Galician cinema attends the Shanghai festival for the second year with "9 Fugas"

Beijing, Jun 12 (EFE) .- The Galician film "9 Fugas", by Fon Cortizo, has been selected for the Shanghai International Film Festival, one of the most important in Asia, which began today, and which in 2020 featured with the participation of the film "The island of lies", also from that autonomous community of Spain.

It is an unprecedented success for Spanish and Galician cinema at the main Chinese international film festival and the only category A in the country.

"9 Fugas" can be seen in the "Multiple Perspectives" section and will also be the first film in Galician to be shown at the festival, since the one directed by Paula Cons from A Coruña, who competed in the official section last year, will be screened in Spanish.

AN EXPERIMENTAL FILM AROUND MEMORY

The film by Fon Cortizo (Vigo, 1978) -representative of the new emerging pool of Galician cinema- is a low-budget experimental film that won the award for best film in the Retueyos section at the recent International Film Festival of the city Spanish of Gijón (FICX).

It was made by first composing the music, with which the team and the actors were inspired for the filming, between chance and improvisation, to shape a very unique work that investigates individual and collective memory.

For the music, Cortizo gave a Vigo improvisation orchestra nine passages from the Chinese oracular book I Ching and as many illustrations by the Galician artist and thinker Alfonso R. Castelao, along with some of his own haikus, as a creative stimulus.

"I wanted to make the film a little backwards, start the house on the roof, record the music and build the film on it," the Vigo director explained to Efe in a telephone conversation.

On that soundtrack they wrote the script, the sequences and the dialogues, although leaving room for the improvisation of the musicians to also be present in the filming and the acting work.

"I had an idea and in the end the connections ended up being woven with a meaning and telling a story. It is a bit like the notebooks of points in which the drawing is completed", says the director.

The film is largely shot on the Isla de San Simón, in the Ría de Vigo, which was a lazaretto and prison where the Republicans were admitted during the Franco regime.

When the film was about to begin, Cortizo's father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which led him to explore "the parallelism between the loss of individual and collective historical memory."

"THERE IS A LOT OF TALENT IN GALICIAN CINEMA"

The film stars the Galician actress María Roja, who has been working since 2008 in cinema, theater, improvisations and television series.

"The film is very choral, both in the musical and in the interpretation. Each actress received a piece of music and a script that was subject to any kind of suggestion, without knowing anything else about the film," Roja tells Efe.

The actress highlights that the film is "handmade and very sensorial" and acknowledges that "it is not the most comfortable or the easiest to watch", although she is delighted with the reception it is having at international festivals, such as the one in Kiev this week. pass.

"Galician cinema seems to be giving a lot of itself, there is a lot of talent, new directors who are sounding nationally and internationally with their own ideas and a love for a very special and well-cared image," he highlights.

Other actresses also participate in the film, such as the Galician Olga Cameselle, Areta Bolado and Noelia Castro or the Argentine Lola Quirós,

With photography by Javier Alvarez and music by Xavier Bertolo and David Santos, among others, it is produced by Xas Films and has the support of the Galician Association of Cultural Industries (AGADIC) of the Xunta de Galicia.

"9 Fugas" is the first fiction film by Fon Cortizo, who in 2016 participated with his long documentary "Contrafaces" at the "Visions du Réel" International Documentary Festival in the Swiss city of Nyon, one of the best in Europe in its gender.

Before that, he made several short films, also selected for international festivals in Europe and the United States. Javier Garcia