When Spanish actor-turned-director Aina Clotet obtained a name that her directorial function debut “Viva” was shortlisted for Cannes‘ prestigious Critics’ Week sidebar, she thought she was dreaming. When the choice affirmation name got here a month later, she felt nearly “dizzy” with disbelief.
Clotet had already been to Cannes, albeit at a special competition: her first directorial effort, the collection “This Is Not Sweden,” performed at Canneseries in 2024, received Clotet greatest efficiency, and went on to attain nice success. However the movie competition nonetheless felt like a distant aim to the actor. “Cannes has always been a dream for me as an actress, a dream I thought I may never achieve,” she tells Selection. “With this film, however, I thought I should try. I have an amazing team around me, and they were all big supporters of the film, people who were pushing me to do it even though the chances of getting in were small. When they called us to say we were shortlisted, it was already crazy. It meant they had seen the film and were thinking about it.”
Within the intimate “Viva,” we first meet Clotet’s 40-something Nora throughout a mammography. Her hair remains to be rising from chemotherapy, and her face is lit up with the glow of somebody who went via one thing devastating and made it to the opposite facet. However the scan has picked one thing up, and alarm bells ring as soon as extra. Even hungrier for all times than earlier than, the scientist throws herself headfirst right into a passionate affair and in-depth analysis that may assist fight the ever-escalating results of local weather change.
Clotet remembers first discovering her vocation as an actress on the early age of 11, when she landed her first-ever position on the TV3 present “Estació d’enllaç.” It was solely a decade later, when she launched into a level at Barcelona’s famend Pompeu Fabra, that Clotet realized she additionally cherished to write down. “I started writing stories and realized at that point that I might like to direct,” she remembers. “But 20 years ago, it wasn’t that easy to direct as a woman. We had references like Isabel Coixet, but it was still hard. It was only 10 years ago, already in my thirties, that I began seeing directing as a possibility.”
The actor then started to develop initiatives concurrently together with her appearing jobs, which alleviated the strain fellow first-time administrators typically face. “I wanted to invest a lot of time in developing my stories and truly understanding what I wanted to explore.” Quickly after, Clotet met veteran producer Edmon Roch of Ikiru Movies. “To me, he was the best producer in Spain,” she says. “When we met, he was the wisest, most knowledgeable person, while being humble at the same time and a really hard worker.” Not lengthy after and nonetheless in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic days, the 2 started working collectively on “Viva,”
“He has been the best producer I can ever imagine,” notes Clotet. “He’s been on my side from the very first day, through shooting and post production, always respecting me even when he didn’t agree with me. I’m very grateful to Edmon.”
Roch echoes the reward, calling Clotet a “unique voice” and a “pleasure” to work with. The producer additionally emphasised how he “loved” the best way the director depicts Nora in “a way that you don’t necessarily have to agree with her, but you understand her.” “I thought this was something crucial in making the film real. There’s a lot of truth in the story that is being told, in the relationship with her parents, with other men, with her surroundings… The film is also about what is happening with the climate today, but without having to make it too big a subject. She’s just making sure that these elements are around us.”
“Viva” courtesy of Andrea Resmini
Throughout improvement, Clotet started engaged on different initiatives and realized she would additionally like to provide. That’s how her Funicular Movies label got here to be. “We stepped into co-production with Edmon, which was very natural and easy. Producing is a very organic thing for me, and now that Funicular has grown, I’d like to be able to make other projects from talent I know and help them in the future,” she provides.
As for “Viva” itself, Clotet says an important factor for her was to search out the proper tone. “I am really obsessive about tone. I find that life is a permanent balance of different genres; we are always going from drama, humor, tension, fear… I really like to mix it up because it makes it feel more real and that you are there with the characters.”
The director praises her “very important” collaborator, screenwriter Valentina Viso, who has helped her discover simply the proper tone for her function debut. “With ‘Viva,’ we wanted to look at the human necessity to talk about feelings and our deepest fears, which include a fear of loneliness and of death. That is what moves the movie. But I wanted the film to have a certain lightness as well. We also wanted to explore this fight we have between our brain and our body, between what we feel is right to do and what our body desires.”
“Talking about cancer was the best way we found to explore our deepest fear,” she provides. “We wanted to start the film with her recent recovery, but also a lingering shadow because she hadn’t yet understood or was able to face the idea of impermanence. Impermanence was one of the first words that came to my mind when I began working on the film. I wanted to talk about how you can’t take life for granted and how things are continuously changing.”
Talking about portraying a later coming-of-age on display screen, Clotet credit her fellow feminine administrators and creatives for serving to her understand it was doable to broach such points on display screen. “Women are directing more and more, we are growing and ageing, and are in charge of our own stories. I still want to see more stories about women in their fifties, sixties, seventies… We are still missing so many stories about women. We have so much to say. I am glad to be a part of that change.”
