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FESTIVALS Portugal

Trueba and Cruz reunited in La Reina de España

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- Yesterday during a master class at the 11th FEST New Directors / New Films, the Oscar-winning director alluded to his upcoming project

Trueba and Cruz reunited in La Reina de España
Director Fernando Trueba

Spanish director Fernando Trueba is eager to work alongside actress Penelope Cruz in his upcoming film La reina de España [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fernando Trueba
film profile
]
. The project is the sequel to La niña de tus ojos, bringing together the same cast as in 1998, and starring, besides Cruz, Jorge Sanz, Antonio Resines, Santiago Segura, Neus Asensi, Loles León, Rosa María Sardá and Jesús Bonilla. Trueba alluded to La reina de España at the master class he held yesterday at the Training Ground of the 11th FEST New Directors / New Films, where he also looked back at his eventful career.

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“Writing the film was wonderful. I knew the characters and I know the actors who will be playing them again 18 years later! I was laughing all along while writing the script, imagining how they will bounce off each other.” Trueba also admitted that working with Cruz will be a challenge. He jokingly told her: “Now that you are an international movie star, please make sure you don’t make my life miserable, or I'll burn the script!”

La niña de tus ojos was made a few years after Trueba won an Oscar for Belle Epoque, one of the pinnacles of a multifaceted career which includes documentary and animation films, and producing films by emerging film-makers.

“I have a production company but I don’t see myself as a producer. The thing is that the Spanish industry was, and still is, a small one, so I started to produce in order to keep working. Besides, working with co-producers allows me to have more control over the film”, he explained.

When questioned about the state of the Spanish film industry, Trueba praised the success of films such as Spanish Affair [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 and expressed his contentment about new directors “who are able to make Hollywood films, imitating American thrillers in quite an effective way. However, those are not the films that tend to appeal to me the most. I would say that Spain’s national genre is comedy.”

When looking back at his past as a film critic, Trueba confessed he is “sort of ashamed of having been one. I was offered to compile a book with my reviews but declined. Now I never read reviews, especially those of my own films: if they are bad, it can be dangerous. If they are good, it can be dangerous too. I prefer that people forget them, just in case”, concluded Trueba.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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