\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2022, Pedro Almod\u00f3var hailed \u201cLullaby,\u201d the feature debut of Basque director Alauda Ruiz de Az\u00faa as \u201cundoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years.\u201d Her first series, \u201cQuerer,\u201d acquired by Arte, won the top prize this year at Series Mania, the top TV festival in Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tNow, if the enthusiastic reaction of most Spanish reviewers is anything to go by, Ruiz de Az\u00faa\u2019s \u201cSundays\u201d (\u201cLos Domingos\u201d) sees her make good on the promise detected by Almod\u00f3var. With a days of main competition films still to play at San Sebasti\u00e1n, the family drama \u2013 which would also be a coming of age tale if that process were so truncated \u2013 sits top, head-and-shoulders among other competitors for San Sebastian\u2019s Golden Shell on Basque newspaper El Diario Vasco\u2019s critics\u2019 poll.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film\u2019s title draws on an irony, Ru\u00edz de Az\u00faa said at a San Sebasti\u00e1n press conference. Sundays were supposed to be a time when a Spanish family comes together over lunch. In her film, Sundays show a family falling apart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tOne underlying cause of contention is economic. Father I\u00f1aki has drawn a bank loan against his mother\u2019s flat to prop up his failing restaurant business. There is little sign that, if the family\u2019s grandmother dies, Maite will get part of the inheritance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe catalyst of building friction, however, is I\u00f1aki\u2019s eldest daughter Ainara who begins the film begging Maite to persuade I\u00f1aki to let her go on a retreat organized by the local Betinas convent nuns, an enclosed order. \u201cWhy do you want to shut yourself up with a load of old women,\u201d I\u00f1aki asks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIt turns out the retreat is one step in a process of \u201cdiscernment,\u201d Ainara\u2019s spiritual director, a dashing young priest explains to I\u00f1aki and Maite, where Ainara will learn from God \u2013 with whom she already talks sometimes, she says \u2013 what He wants of her. Maite tries to talk Ainara out of making a decision so soon: She should choose the life she wants but not before living life, going to university, for instance, before choosing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tOne question in the film is whether Ainara has been deeply wounded by the death of her mother, who was deeply religious, and the distance of her father, driving her to seek the warmth of another mother, Prioress Mother Isabel, and another father, the Father.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI feel loved by Him,\u201d Ainara insists. She doesn\u2019t mention feeling being loved by her family. When she doesn\u2019t back down, Maite takes more radical action.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThis is an austere, sober film. Textures, colors repeat in Ainara\u2019s family home and the Betinas Convent. There are very few shots of the sky, Ruiz de Az\u00faa noted at a \u201cSundays\u201d press conference. \u201cI wanted the two worlds, which could appear very different, to belong to the same world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cSundays\u201d is produced by Movistar Plus+, the biggest Spanish pay TV\/SVOD operator, as well as Marisa Fern\u00e1ndez Armenteros\u2019 Buenapinta Media (\u201cThe Mole Agent\u201d), Sandra Hermida at Colos\u00e9 Producciones (\u201cSociety of the Snow\u201d), Nahikari Ipi\u00f1a at Sayaka Producciones, and Manu Calvo at Encanta Films (\u201cWounded\u201d).The film is sold internationally by France\u2019s Le Pacte, BTeam Pictures will distribute in Spain, releasing the film on Oct. 14. \u201c<\/p>\n
\n\tVariety<\/em>\u00a0talked to Ruiz de Azua before the world premiere of \u201cSundays.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSundays\u201d turns on a liberal Basque family which is shocked when the daughter Ainara, 17, announces she is considering becoming a cloistered nun\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tOne issue in the film is the fragility of tolerance, which is a fictitious tolerance, adopted to avoid conflicts. A genuine, intimate, authentic tolerance regarding what other people think is often difficult, right? That fragility is very much related to the weakness or fragility of a family.<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s notable that Ainara finds it easier to talk to God than with her own father.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI started to write \u201cSundays\u201d because I was interested in he theme of religion vocation but it became a new way to talk about the adult family world. A family should be a refuge for love, where there\u2019s more communication, where things are talked about, attempting to understand other people\u2026The adults in the film don\u2019t talk about what they really feel, or their real intentions. Except for Maite and when she explodes, everything does.<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019ve also talked about adolescent vulnerability\u2026.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThe film\u2019s tension is based on whether Ainara\u2019s vocation is spiritual, genuine, authentic or induced or provoked by her family world which is weakening. I have tried to create a space where spectate can draw their own conclusions. Is there something lacking, or a wound, an adult world which pushes her to look in another place for refuge, the affection which she doesn\u2019t encounter at home?<\/p>\n \n\tAnd you suggest that both factors operate\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s complex. But not all girls who goes to a religious high school or a retreat end up becoming nuns. So though the religious world can push her in that direction, you have the sensation\u2019s there\u2019s more driving her.<\/p>\n \n\tTwo sources of emotion in the film is the use of music, the Nick Cave\u2019s \u201cInto My Arms,\u201d used in the film and the trailer, which Ainara sings in the school choir, and religious music when Ainara and her friends go to a disc and experience first love. There\u2019s a sense of the liturgy of such scene, a sense of the secular sacred\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s one of my favourite sequences. Apart from its ethical and political dilemas, the film tries to evoke a sensation of the spiritual, to feeling alive, to look for something more which isn\u2019t necessarily be found in a convent. I liked the idea that even those of us who are not believers need to believe in something, which can be the family we create or our partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2022, Pedro Almod\u00f3var hailed \u201cLullaby,\u201d the feature debut of Basque director Alauda Ruiz de Az\u00faa as \u201cundoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years.\u201d Her first series, \u201cQuerer,\u201d acquired by Arte, won the top prize this year at Series Mania, the top TV festival in Europe.\u00a0 Now, if the enthusiastic reaction of most<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[14567,14569,2579,2107,14566,14568,14570],"class_list":{"0":"post-23924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-alauda","9":"tag-azua","10":"tag-breaks","11":"tag-director","12":"tag-querer","13":"tag-ruiz","14":"tag-sundays"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}