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Interview
10 April 2022 2.00 h

Isona Passola

creator and producer of the ’Cucut’ tv series

“Well-explained stories interest everyone”

The novel La vida sense la Sara Amat (Life with­out Sara Amat) by Pep Puig has proved to be an in­spir­ing story for Isona Pas­sola (Barcelona, 1953). In 2015, she was part of the lit­er­ary jury that awarded it the Sant Jordi novel award. In 2019, she pro­duced its film adap­ta­tion, di­rected by Laura Jou, and on Mon­day March 28 TV3 pre­miered her first se­ries ’Cucut’, which she cre­ated and pro­duced and which con­tin­ues the story. A year after leav­ing the pres­i­dency of the Cata­lan Film Acad­emy, and tak­ing over the Ateneu Barcelonès cul­tural or­gan­i­sa­tion, Isona Pas­sola has more time and en­ergy to de­vote to au­dio­vi­sual pro­duc­tion.

What did you see in ‘Life With­out Sara Amat’ to sug­gest Laura di­rect the film and to make it your first TV se­ries?
I was on the jury of the Sant Jordi novel award; it was a time when the film bud­gets were low. I liked this story about teenagers, and as I had seen Laura Jou di­rect the kids in ’Pa negre’, I pro­posed it to her. She worked as a coach for young ac­tors and she also did ’Un mon­stre em ve a veure’. She seemed to me the right per­son to do it.
The se­ries is your orig­i­nal idea. How come you saw con­ti­nu­ity in this story?
I took the movie to the Cannes tele­vi­sion fes­ti­val to show it to my reg­u­lar French and Ger­man part­ners. They said there were some amaz­ing ac­tors and en­cour­aged me to take the story fur­ther. I won­dered how I could do that; since the girl ran away and the boy was in love with her, I thought he should chase after her. But I didn’t just want to do an en­ter­tain­ment se­ries, I wanted to go deeper and show how a young girl can find her­self at a cer­tain mo­ment when a se­ries of prob­lems over­whelm her. Every­thing that can hap­pen to a dis­ori­ented young girl comes out in the se­ries. Al­though it’s told as a thriller and is en­ter­tain­ment, it touches on back­ground is­sues that re­ally con­cern young peo­ple, such as sui­cide.
Do you think it might be of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to young peo­ple?
It ap­peals to many au­di­ences be­cause it’s nar­rated as a thriller and be­cause it’s not true that youth is­sues only in­ter­est young peo­ple. Just as it’s not true that adult is­sues are only of in­ter­est to adults. Well-ex­plained sto­ries in­ter­est every­one.
The se­ries be­gins with the dis­cov­ery of the body of an uniden­ti­fied girl and the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Do you think that the pop­u­lar­ity of ’Crims’ can help?
It’s a very fic­tional se­ries. Pho­tog­ra­phy, cos­tumes, music... every­thing is from the eight­ies. It’s very dif­fer­ent from ’Crims’. There’s a corpse in every de­tec­tive movie and crime novel. It’s a fic­tion se­ries like so many oth­ers are. In a way, it’s true the other way around, ’Crims’ has drawn on fic­tion to re­con­struct real facts about crimes, and that’s why it’s so catchy.
What’s your life like after leav­ing the Cata­lan Film Acad­emy and you are now the head of the Ateneu Barcelonès? Will you pro­duce more?
Yes, I’m prepar­ing a movie. The Acad­emy was an ex­pe­ri­ence at a very dif­fi­cult time; I had to ded­i­cate a lot of en­ergy and time to it be­cause the sit­u­a­tion of Cata­lan cin­ema was dis­as­trous. It looks like things are get­ting a lit­tle bet­ter and I’m very happy about that. The pan­demic has shown the need for our own au­dio­vi­sual con­tent. There’s no na­tion with­out a pow­er­ful au­dio­vi­sual sec­tor. We have so much to offer, as we saw in the lat­est Gaudí awards, and now we need to make it work. If you look at the cred­its of Madrid pro­duc­tions, they are full of Cata­lans. The Ateneu is fan­tas­tic, not least its build­ing and gar­den. But it’s about cul­ture in gen­eral: lit­er­a­ture, po­etry, vi­sual arts, phi­los­o­phy... I’m de­lighted. Yet being head of the Ateneu doesn’t stop me from pro­duc­ing. I’d re­ally like to pro­duce films that will re­main.

in­ter­view film & TV se­ries

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