PRODUCTION / FUNDING Spain / Romania
Ana Asensio returns to her home country with Goat Girl
- After her award-winning debut feature Most Beautiful Island, the Spanish director is now making a film about her childhood, with all its sensations and disappointments
The actress, screenwriter and director Ana Asensio is currently shooting in Madrid Goat Girl (La niña de la cabra), her second feature film and the first to be filmed in Spain after Most Beautiful Island [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ana Asensio
film profile], a chilling film set in New York, which won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW 2017. The very young newcomers Alessandra González and Juncal Fernández lead the cast, which is completed by Gloria Muñoz (who we recently saw in Good Manners), Lorena López (Low Season [+see also:
trailer
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film review
trailer
interview: Paco Cabezas
film profile]), Zaira Romero (The Swamp’s Silence [+see also:
trailer
interview: Marc Vigil
film profile]), Silvia Torregrosa and Enrique Villén.
The action takes place in the Spanish capital back in May 1988, as eight-year-old Elena (played by Alessandra González) copes with the death of her grandmother as she gets ready to make her first communion. Her friendship with Serezade (Juncal Fernández), a gypsy girl who keeps her goat with her, leads her to question whether the world is really the way it has been told to her as she tries to make sense of the tension between her parents, the teachings of the Church, her questions about death and her growing fascination with her friend and her pet.
On her return for this second project, the director comments: "I left Spain more than twenty years ago and the more time passed, the more I missed my country. In the United States, where I live, I am and always will be a foreigner. The way cinema is conceived, as part of the culture and identity of a country, is something I share and would be proud to be a part of. I'm really looking forward to filming again in the bright light of Madrid and its spectacular sunsets, reliving that childhood that is still so present in me.”
The filmmaker's motivation for making this film stems from her desire to capture her past: "I have vivid memories of my childhood; more than any other period of my life. I wonder if how I remember things has changed over time. As if I were re-enacting scenes from a film or if they were always the way I imagine them today. Most of the time these memories are sensory: the taste of milk and biscuits, the sound of a song from that time or the smell of crayons," Asensio concludes.
Goat Girl participated in the Torino Film Lab Extended 2022 workshop and is supported by the ICAA, Comunidad de Madrid and Eurimages. It is produced by Aquí y Allí Films, Avalon and La niña de la cabra AIE, in co-production with the Romanian company Avanpost Media. It will be distributed in Spain by Avalon with its international sales managed by Alpha Violet.
(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)
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