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13 March 2022 2.00 h

Tono Folguera

ono Folguera PRODUCER OF GOLDEN BEAR WINNER ‘ALCARRÀS’

“This film will mark the history of this country”

Agustí Vil­laronga, Clara Roquet and other film­mak­ers and ac­tors nom­i­nated for 2022 Gaudí Awards were busy con­grat­u­lat­ing Folguera for his suc­cess in the Berli­nale film fes­ti­val be­fore this in­ter­view in the Arts Hotel in Barcelona in the run-up to the Cata­lan Cin­ema Acad­emy awards.

Folguera was at the hotel as the pro­ducer of two of the films nom­i­nated for Gaudí awards, Lib­er­tad and Mediterráneo, and for the doc­u­men­tary Ba­lan­drau, in­fern glaçat. But it is an­other of his films that has re­cently got the head­lines: Al­carràs, di­rected by Carla Simon, which won the Golden Bear award at the Berli­nale film fes­ti­val, the first time a Cata­lan film in Cata­lan has won the in­ter­na­tional fes­ti­val’s major prize. The film will be re­leased in cin­e­mas on April 29.

What was the award cer­e­mony like?
We were very re­laxed after the screen­ings, but when we ar­rived we were ner­vous be­cause the film had never been screened be­fore the fes­ti­val. The re­ac­tions were amaz­ing; there was ap­plause at the press screen­ing. We could sense that some­thing spe­cial had hap­pened. But then we are talk­ing about the Berli­nale, the Golden Bear award, a small film in Cata­lan, with non-pro­fes­sional ac­tors, with­out any celebri­ties...
Nor is it com­mon for a di­rec­tor to win the Golden Bear the first time they com­pete in the of­fi­cial sec­tion.
Of course, this al­most never hap­pens. When you go to a fes­ti­val you know that the re­cep­tion from the pub­lic and the press is one thing, and that of the jury some­thing else. We were told not to leave, but they didn’t give any­thing away. We thought that maybe we might win the best di­rec­tor award. But the awards went on and on, one after an­other, and all of a sud­den we looked at each other and re­alised that all that was left was the Golden Bear, and we started cry­ing, shak­ing... We even won­dered if they had made a mis­take and we’d won noth­ing. It was in­de­scrib­able, an un­for­get­table ex­pe­ri­ence.
Does a Golden Bear award guar­an­tee dis­tri­b­u­tion world­wide?
Yes, we al­ready had in­ter­na­tional dis­tri­b­u­tion with MK2, the most pow­er­ful com­pany there is, but com­ing to Berlin also brought us more of­fers and sales in many coun­tries. After win­ning the Golden Bear, the sales agent’s phone didn’t stop ring­ing; every­body was call­ing with of­fers. What we can say now for sure is that the Lleida ac­cent will be heard in all cor­ners of the world. Now it’s been sold, it will be re­leased all over the globe. For a lan­guage and cul­ture like ours, that is price­less. Being able to ex­port Cata­lan, and in ad­di­tion, ex­port Al­carràs, with all that it means, the de­fence of cer­tain kind of rural world and way of life... All this makes Al­carràs a spe­cial film that I think will leave its mark on the his­tory of this coun­try.
What was the bud­get?
Three mil­lion euros, which is an av­er­age bud­get for an in­de­pen­dent Eu­ro­pean film. Above all, it al­lowed us pro­duc­ers to give Carla the time she needed. A film like Al­carràs needs time, as do all films. But that means money. We were able to carry out a huge cast­ing process, with nine thou­sand peo­ple, and the di­rec­tor was able to re­hearse for six months with the ac­tors and turn them into a fam­ily with a con­nec­tion that comes across on the screen.
So it’s pos­si­ble to go any­where and as­pire to any­thing with Cata­lan?
It’s no ob­sta­cle if you go abroad with a solid pro­ject and with strong fund­ing, and if the per­son be­hind it has a recog­nised ca­reer and tal­ent. I think this is about to change, and that the gov­ern­ment has un­der­stood per­fectly that it’s cru­cial for the coun­try to have a strong au­dio­vi­sual sec­tor, with three or four strongly pro­duced films each year on a Eu­ro­pean scale, and with sup­port for the small in­de­pen­dent cin­ema that gives us so much joy. The Golden bear award for Al­carràs will help this to be un­der­stood even clearer.

film in­ter­view

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