Yahoo Lifestyle Spain’s Gala Gracia Heads to Malaga With Sentimental Debut Feature ‘Remnants of You,’ Reveals Trailer
Forqué-nominated Spanish director Gala Gracia (“Evanescente”) will debut her tender first feature, “Remnants of You” (“Lo que queda de ti”), in competition at this year’s Malaga Film Festival.
The narrative follows Sara (Laia Manzanares, “Internal Affairs,” “Estoy Vivo”), a young jazz pianist living in New York who’s returned home to Spain’s Pyrenees after news of her father’s abrupt death. As heightened mourning grips her, she finds she’s inherited his sheep farm alongside her sister Elena (Ángela Cervantes, “Motherhood,” “Valenciana”), planting her firmly in a hometown both familiar and suffocating.
More from Variety
A highly personal portrait of reconciling desires against the sturdy expectations life doles out, the film centers Sara’s trepidation, as she weighs abandoning her passions to run the family business in an attempt to uphold her father’s legacy, potentially sacrificing the nourishment of her own.
Produced by Carlo D’Ursi’s Potenza Producciones (“The Quiet Maid”) with co-production credits to Bastian Films, Sajama Films, Garbo Produzioni and Fado Filmes, Germany’s Beta Cinema (“Cicadas”) handles world sales for the film, which offers an intimate glimpse into the dynamics of duty and unshakeable family bonds.
Gracia, in an act of catharsis, penned the story to mirror her life. Weighty emotions poured into the work as she ploughed towards her masters degree in London, a screenwriting teacher encouraging her to document the events in a script that would lead to the fiction feature’s production.
“I cried while writing the screenplay, also when I was editing. The first draft of the script was based on my reality. Rewriting, it was more cinematic, separated from my experience, but there are still many references from my personal life,” she told Variety.
Women are firmly placed in demanding, central roles in the film — town veterinarian, sheepherder, jazz musician — asserting their talents alongside the men in the community, which grants them a dominance onscreen that feels as effortless as it is necessary.
Cinema can play a key role in busting stereotypes, and Gracia credits the desire to fill in the gaps in representation for such powerful protagonists. Recalling her rural upbringing, she points to the role women had always played organically — working on farms without hesitation and participating in physically demanding tasks typical of life in the countryside.
“For me, it was natural to see female vets, women helping with the animals. Women work these jobs as much as their husbands, and I wasn’t seeing films where they were represented, so I tried to include them on screen in these roles naturally, without explanation,” she relayed.
Alongside Manzanares and Cervantes, were regional talents that served to pepper the screen in small roles with a natural warmth and depth, adding to scenes that demanded authenticity — the leads coaching them on acting while learning a thing or two about farming tasks in return, a reciprocal approach to rehearsals that led to a fruitful shoot.
“It was very tender to see them working and listening to each other, learning together. For me, it was a gift. It gave us very special moments,” Gracia recounted.
Ruy de Carvalho (“Olga Drummond”), Anna Tenta (“Freaks Out”), Natalia Risueño, Ignacio Olivar, Angelita Henríquez and Óscar López round out the key cast.
Shooting took place in the Franja region, bordering Catalonia and Aragon, in order to highlight the dual nature of such vast terrain and the duality it represents for Sara, a far cry from a bustling New York City. The director sought to develop that sharp dichotomy and turn a lens on the stark differences between a bustling urban life and the slow comforts and calamities of home.
“The countryside has this double face. It can bring you the most beautiful landscape — caves, beautiful sunsets — and it also connects you to your origins. Even if you don’t come from the countryside, it has something that connects you to your roots, to the origin of the world, and freezes you at some point,” she stated. “The countryside can also be very cruel. Nature is cruel, you see death. This contrast, this double face of the countryside, I wanted to represent that.”
Through the character of Sara’s father, the director additionally nods to the organic livestock farming movement in the community that her father strived to champion. Becoming a model nearing extinction due to lower profit margins, she felt an urgency to revive the conversation around its ecological benefits.
“I wanted to defend the native breeds of sheep in this region, Xisqueta, the breed of sheep we shot with, in order to save them, they’re disappearing in many areas due to globalization,” she relayed.
All-in, the feature carefully presents a grief-bound character study, presenting a story exploring the ways in which the loss of a steady presence in our lives upends the structures we’d believed would always remain stable. In this loss of stability, the two sisters work to dissolve their despair and bond over their divergent paths toward healing.
As younger generations become more inclined to stray further from their roots, Gracia admits the tension of facing these decisions is the genesis of the plot, within each sister as they navigate a future without their patriarch.
“When you leave home, you change at some point, you grow in a different direction. That’s why the sisters enter into conflict. They’re going through different grieving processes.”
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
