02/10/2023 - The director and producer of the project, set in the year of the Falklands War, tell us about her origins and goals

Producer Federico Eibuszyc and director Bárbara Sarasola-Day (© Festival de San Sebastián/Pablo Cifuentes)

We spoke to the director and producer Bárbara Sarasola-Day and the producer Federico Eibuszyc (Pucará Cine), behind the Argentinian project Little War, which won the €20,000 DALE! Award, presented by the European Film Agency Directors Association (EFAD) and the Conference of Ibero-American Audiovisual and Cinematographic Authorities (CAACI), at the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum of the 71st San Sebastian Film Festival. The project already has European collaboration, in particular from the Netherlands (Viking Films).

Cineuropa: How did the project come about and why did you decide to pursue it?
Bárbara Sarasola-Day: Little War is a biographical fiction about my family and me as a child, when I was 6 years old. It revolves around my relationship with my grandmother, who is basically the focus, a woman of around 55 years old who discovers she’s going to die, and keeps it a secret. In the time she has left, she tries to say goodbye to the world in the best way possible, trying to leave as few unpaid bills as possible, and a legacy for her granddaughter, whom she knows she won't see grow up, so that she’ll have all the tools she needs to make the life she wants as an adult. Also important is the context in which it happened, which was during the year of the Falklands War. That part of my mother's family is from England and is part of the Anglo-Argentine community, which has wanted to preserve the language throughout the generations, using it in their own homes, as well as their own culture, which they keep very present. This is the contradiction I want to explore, that of having origins in the enemy's village.

Perhaps this is something that has not been widely addressed in Argentinean cinema.
BS-D: The Falklands War is the most important war we had in the 20th century, the only one where we were directly involved on the battlefield. And our community has not been portrayed on screen, it is very much in the minority among the different European descendants, and it has also changed a lot after the war, in its nature, in its dynamics. Also, the British footprint is everywhere. There is a Torre de los Ingleses ("Tower of the English”) in Buenos Aires, the only Harrods branch outside the UK was in Buenos Aires; they even brought football to the country.

Apart from being a director, you’ve also worked as a producer in recent years.
BS-D: I started out as a director and this will be my third film. I don't make films very often, and in between I worked producing. But I had been thinking about it for a long time, about finding the time to do it. Because it is such a personal project, the characters will even have the same names they have in real life. It took me years to understand what the heart of the story was, what the most important thing was to share with others, what the question that I was going to ask myself was and that was going to accompany me on the journey.

The film is in an early stage of financing, what are you looking for at the moment?
BS-D: We want to meet potential co-producers and sales agents. The award is no means a small one, and it will help us a lot with development.

Federico Eibuszyc: The project had already been at CineMart, where we met several producers, and now here in San Sebastian we’ve met new ones. Bárbara is about to develop a version to start showing potential co-producers, to start involving them now, we don't want to wait until the last minute to add them, we want them to start giving us their opinions. We want to choose the right co-production scheme for the film, probably with three or four countries, and these meetings help us to get a picture of what our options are.

Both you and your Argentinian colleagues are speaking out against what could happen in your country with the possible far-right government.
BS-D: We’re a bit concerned because we don't know what is going to happen and whether we will need the support of the whole film community around the world. If this terrible thing happens, we will resist in some way, we’re fighters and always have been.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)