Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Queens’ Writer-Director Klaudia Reynicke And EPs Jessica Alba And Tracey Nyberg On Capturing The Humanity Of Young Womanhood And Complex Familial Bonds in Their Swiss Oscar Contender
The Swiss-Peruvian-Spain co-production Queens, co-written and directed by Klaudia Reynicke, is set amidst the grueling reign of Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorship in the 1990s. During the social and political unrest, the story centers on the goings-on of an unconventional family living in Lima. Elena (Jimena Lindo) is a mother of two young daughters (Abril Gjurinovic and Luana Vega) who has chosen to accept a job offer in Minnesota to escape the country’s turmoil. However, she needs the legal signature of her estranged husband, Carlos (Gonzalo Molina), in order to take her children with her. When Carlos comes back into the picture, the girls, who don’t particularly enjoy his company, soon grow fond of him, complicating any chance of safety Elena has in store.
After premiering at Sundance, the film won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature in the Generation Kplus strand of Berlin. In Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, it won the Audience Award and won Best Screenplay at the Festival de Lima in Peru. Here, Queens EPs Jessica Alba and Tracey Nyberg and Reynicke talk to Deadline about the joys of embracing complex familial storylines and the importance of reconnecting with your roots.
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DEADLINE: What was your reaction to Switzerland choosing Queens for the Oscars?
KLAUDIA REYNICKE: Back in September, we found out we were on the shortlist for Switzerland. They had a short list of two films. It was mine and another one. The other film I’ve seen is a great film. It was shot in French in France and Lausanne in Switzerland. So, we were like, “There’s no way they’re picking ours,” which is in Spanish and takes place in Peru. The thing is that I’m Peruvian, but I’m also Swiss. And for a country to pick a film that will represent them, because there’s a lot of public money, you have to add “points.” This means that for this film to be Swiss, it couldn’t be picked by Peru even though the actors I chose were Peruvian; everything behind the camera had to be something else because we have two other countries of production and its public money. So, we had to pick heads of the department from Switzerland because that’s where most of the funding was, and some from Spain. So, when you add all these things together, the film has more points in Switzerland.
So, when we made it to the shortlist, I was already so honored to be on the shortlist. Suddenly, they call us and say, “It’s you.” And we’re like, “What?! Are you sure?” Since then, I’ve been excited and so thankful that it shows me the open-mindedness of Switzerland because they’re actually picking something that talks more about immigration and family somewhere else. They were like, “We believe in this film and these values. We believe in the story of all these women who believe in this other woman who made that film.” And I’m like, “Wow, this is insane.” Since then, it’s been crazy because I’ve never done any Oscars campaign before [laughs].
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DEADLINE: Talk about the need to film in Peru. What was that experience like?
REYNICKE: We did everything in Peru because it didn’t make sense for us not to. It’s a small film. It’s a small-budget film. So, we didn’t get any studio saying things like, “Oh, we are going to reproduce all this somewhere else.” No. It was like, “We have to do it in Peru. And that’s it.” Peru had to be the place to film everything for the story, actors, actresses and to have the entire vibe from that country in the’90s.
DEADLINE: That house that the family of women lives in is so gorgeous in a very retro way. Talk more about the atmosphere and aesthetics you wanted to capture with the film.
REYNICKE: The house is from the ’50s. I was trying to find a house where I used to live, which is my grandma’s house. My mom and I used to live at my grandma’s house. She was a divorcee and then remarried to my stepdad, who is Swiss, so we moved out. But that’s my childhood. So, reconnecting with the country was also a way to reconnect with my youth and what I remember, the ’80s and ’90s. It wasn’t conscious, but I was pretty obsessed when I was looking for the house for the grandmother in the movie [laughs]. When my family saw the film, my cousins were [incredulously] like, “How did you find Grandma’s house again?”
We changed some colors and other minor things. But the house is a character as well because it’s part of this family, and there are so many intense things with all the blackouts and everything that I needed to be able to tell the context of where this family is living.
DEADLINE: How did your background as an immigrant and your co-writer Diego Vega’s background help inform the story of Queens?
REYNICKE: I thought of many moments from my life when I started creating this project. It was a need to tell the story in Peru, in a country where I haven’t lived as an adult, a country that I left when I was 10, a country that I’ve been telling people I’m Peruvian. Now I’m in my 40s, and I don’t know how Peruvian I actually am. I had this identity thing where I had done other films but was always away from everything related to my homeland. For my co-writer Diego, we had many talks, and he wanted to hear all the stuff I remembered. I did the same thing with him because we had very similar lives. He is also from Peru. He left when he was young, but then he went back as an adult and now he lives in Barcelona.
It was interesting for us to just play with both of our lives, being like, “OK, we are Peruvian, but what do we remember?” So, some of his memories made it in. For example, the father makes the “atomic eggs,” right? He would tell me, “Oh, my dad used to always say, ‘I’m making atomic this and atomic that.'” I guess because back then, ’80s or ’90s, it was such a thing to be atomic. I don’t know what that was about. For me, it’s the car that goes in the desert. That’s something from my childhood, in Ica, a city that is desert and the ocean. That’s one of the strongest memories I have. So, I needed to recreate that moment.
Also, there’s the ghost. We have many ghosts in our culture, so we both agreed on, we could not live without ghosts in the story. The house, the family, they needed their ghost. It’s a good ghost that’s going to protect them. It’s not exactly like the scary ghost from the Western world. It’s something else. And all the parties, my family was like that [laughs]. I do remember this with a lot of warmth in my heart. Recreating those scenes was very important to me.
DEADLINE: There are many layers to Queens. Originally reading the synopsis during its film festival run, I thought the story would be mostly about him. But outside of the brief taxi rides, we don’t see his life outside of interacting with the girls. It’s very much about womanhood and sisterhood. Why did this work better for your narrative?
REYNICKE: This is primarily a story of a family that is not a family anymore and that somehow will become a family before they separate forever. By saying this, I want to underline the fact that they’re not a family anymore because Carlos is just out of the picture. We have all these women though, and I wanted it to be a theme of family. The important part is why do they re-become a family? It’s because there is a union that is created by this upcoming departure, by the fact that the father learns to be a father, by the fact that the kids learn what it is to have a father, and by the fact that there is a mother who accepts and listens to her daughters. It was important to tell the story not from one point of view but from different generations as well. We have all these women, and we have the two kids who are very different because when you’re 10 years old and when you’re 14, you’re really different. The mom has her own agenda, the grandma has something else. And to have this man making this a bit messier was the idea because that’s what a family is about. I love my family, but my family is a bit crazy, I think [laughs]. When nothing is perfect, but love is there, you work it out.
DEADLINE: For what he lacks in being reliable, Carlos is a sympathetic character. You don’t let him off the hook for the lies or the distress he causes. He’s just trying to do the best he can with what he has. How did you approach that character working with Gonzalo Molina?
REYNICKE: Having a character with these imperfections was very important because I know a lot of Carlos’ [laughs]. But it was also about making him likable because we get attached to him, and he’s a reflection of the country. He’s the mirror of a society that’s falling apart. Yes, he lies, and he does a bunch of things we can criticize him for. But at the same time, I think this man is underwater. And it was important for me to talk about this group of women. This mother is doing everything on her own, and she’s the pilot of the whole thing. She’s also in a society where it’s not easy to be a single mom. But this man is also in a society where it’s not easy to be a father who can’t give money to his ex-wife or can’t be there because he’s so ashamed of himself that he prefers not to see his daughters and disappear.
Originally, in the script, Carlos was a lot darker, and then I would make people read the script and 50% liked him and the other 50% hated him. I had to be very careful with the casting because, at the beginning, because it was such a dark character, I had someone a bit darker in mind. And when I met Gonzalo Molina, he was this actor who was talking too loud and kind of clumsy [laughs]. At the beginning, I was like, “Wow, I don’t think this is going to work.” But then I’m like, “Wow, he’s exactly the opposite of the character we’d written.” I thought it was going to bring an entire balance to this character. A script is a dead thing for me. It has no emotions, nothing. Life comes from the person who’s going to do the role, so we found Carlos this way.
DEADLINE: Jessica and Tracey, what led you to add this project to your Lady Metalmark Entertainment brand?
JESSICA ALBA: Tracey brought it to me. She had been talking about this film for a while.
TRACEY NYBERG: I saw it at Sundance. Immediately, I fell in love and reached out to Klaudia, who was just so enamored by what she did as a filmmaker and the performances she got. Then I reached out to Jessica and said she had to watch this. We were just starting the company, maybe three weeks in [laughs].
JESSICA ALBA: What was so beautiful about the film and the performances is the humanity that gets pulled through. You see many stereotypes flipped on their head, and you have compassion for the man who could be considered the villain in other stories. But the father’s role is much more complicated and human. I think there’s a lot of pressure on men to be the breadwinners of a family and to be able to care of everyone. Now, I think we are realizing more that the reality is that women are also capable. There’s a lot of men who are trying to find their place in society, in the world, even if they are grown or if they are fathers. And we need to allow space for that, for men not to have to have it all together and not always to be the king of the castle.
This film does a great job at that, and it’s also good to see he’s a decent man, not just some one-note guy. I thought that was beautiful. I also thought it was so relatable as a mother and as a parent to want something for your kids, as your kids are just completely in their own world. As a parent, you want them to do one thing, but they just want to do their thing, and their reality is just as important to them as the adults. It’s so beautiful the way Klaudia made space for the girls, and that they had their own different personalities and that they’re fully realized young people. I just really loved how all the characters are very dynamic and complex, they all have a beautiful journey in the film.
DEADLINE: What kinds of projects are you both looking for in general? Anything specifically made by women, or is everything open?
NYBERG: We are very interested in things that have strong female representation, whether that’s in front of or behind the camera, but also just stories about women that are complex, interesting and compelling characters– things that are ultimately accessible to audiences. The driving thing for us, too, is diversity. And again, in front of and behind the camera, however that looks. And just having a supportive, creative framework for filmmakers much like Klaudia to hopefully do something interesting. It feels like there is that blank space.
DEADLINE: How did you find the two lead girls, Abril Gjurinovic and Luana Vega?
REYNICKE: We started casting before COVID. I was in Switzerland doing casting. I was sent videos, and then COVID hit, and Peru was one of the countries that suffered the most in Latin America. The country closed completely for two years. When the country opened up again, we started casting again. There is no cinema industry in Peru, especially the type of cinema I do. They have commercials. They have series and soap operas. So, the kids they would send me had another type of language for other things that wouldn’t be as realistic as the films I do. So, I asked the casting directors to go on the streets and find kids. We call it
Yeah. What we call “casting salvaje,” which is “wild casting” in English. So they found Abril in a shopping mall with her dad. Out of 200 kids, I believed everything that she was doing. So, I mentioned to them that I was coming to Lima soon and wanted to make sure she was available to be seen. They called me three days later and said, “We can’t find her anymore.” And I was like, “What?”
Two weeks later, right before I arrived in Peru, they said, “We found her, but she doesn’t live in Peru.” It turns out she lived in Belgium, which is next to Switzerland. So, I flew her to Switzerland with her mom, and she auditioned in my house [laughs]. She’s super talented, but the plus was that her story was pretty much Lucia’s story. She had to leave her father because her parents were separated; her mom told me that they left when there was the horrible COVID situation happening. So, when the casting directors saw her in the shopping mall, she was visiting her dad. When she read the story of Lucia, I think she knew exactly what Lucia was going to live through, so she could give all [her energy to that].
With Luana, it was different because this is pretty much a month before shooting, and I still don’t have the bigger sister, and I’m desperate. I’m Zooming with all the producers. I’m like, “What do we do?” And they kept sending me girls, but nothing that stood out. My Peruvian co-producer, Daniel Vega, also my co-writer’s brother, is on Zoom. I see his daughter walking in the background, and I’m like, “Who’s that?” He’s like, “My daughter, Luana.” I found out she was 14, and I was like, “Daniel, why haven’t I seen no pictures, nothing?” [laughs]. And he lowered his voice to say that because he was a filmmaker and a writer, and his wife is a producer, she [jokingly] hates this world. She wants [our daughter] to do something real like a doctor or lawyer. So, he sends me pictures and left some dialogues of the script around her room. I also cast her best friend, to help her maybe sign on to the project. Eventually, she agreed to send a tape but said, “I’m not going to be an actress, but OK, I’m going to try.” So, she tried and did it perfectly, and I said, “She’s the one.”
DEADLINE: What would you like audiences to take away from this film?
REYNICKE: I want audiences to feel the hope and the light. This project talks about womanhood, migration, complexity, and complicated families. But out of all this, I want people to actually feel the hope that everything can be OK if you put the right feelings towards it. I think for all films and artistic projects, it’s very important to me to have an audience that is open so that they can love these art house films. They can dislike the film too. I prefer to have that than to have someone who doesn’t care at all about the film. I’ve had both reactions, which has been very interesting for me because a lot of people love the film. But from time to time, there’s that person who says something, and I’m like, “That’s good.” It means that the film is actually getting somewhere in particular that moves everyone, and that’s what I want. Now, it’s not my film anymore; it’s people’s film because when it’s out there, it’s not mine anymore.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
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