In Spain, there are testimonies of at least 1,802 victims of sexual abuse within the Church. This is written in the credits of the film Verano en rojo by Belén Macías, which can be seen in movie theaters starting this Friday. A thriller with a social background that wants to echo one of the topics that continue to be the most taboo in the country.
Set in the summer of 2010, when Spain was celebrating its victory in the Soccer World Cup, Commissioner María Ruiz (Marta Nieto) begins an investigation into the murders of two teenagers, trapped in a reality that not even their closest relatives know about. Aided by veteran journalist Luna (José Coronado), the investigation will take them to the doors of a religious order.
“There is still respect for the entire institution of the church and that is why it is necessary to tell when something as serious as this happens and make it visible because it is an issue that has not been addressed at all. I am very interested in social cinema and González Harbor's novel had that thread to draw on, apart from the fact that it fascinated me," Macías explains about how the idea for the film came about. The novel of the same name by Berna González Harbour, on which the film is based, came to the director through a recommendation from her friend and literary agent Palmira Márquez.
Filmed last summer between Madrid and Pamplona “with a heat wave that hindered filming,” this thriller is developed, which came after an extensive documentation process. "We read many press articles about cases of sexual abuse by the Church, we also talked a lot with the police, to create the characters that were part of the investigation body, we also needed other elements so that everything had consistency and was not It was easy to get to the places or find clues, this was the most complicated of all.”
For Macías, the most important thing is to make this film reach the largest possible audience. “As it is a very delicate subject, I wanted it not to be an aggressive film, for the public to intuit rather than see. Although it says that it is for ages thirteen and older, an eight-year-old could see it without a problem. I think there are many ways to tell this topic. Pablo Larraín with El Club did it in a very interesting way, but also very hard, it is another cinematographic experience. Avoiding that aggressiveness and harshness in my case is a success, it is an empathetic film, with a tone that can be reconciled with entertainment." And at the moment they are very happy with the result, in the screenings of the film that they have already done, several people have come up to thank them for making this visible.
“Strength and fragility at the same time” is how Macías defines Marta Nieto, the protagonist of Summer in Red, who accepted the role because for her it was important that the film have a meaning beyond entertainment. “María is a woman of contrasts, very intelligent, but she is also very sensitive, she has a lot of intuition, she is not particularly good at action, but she does it, she is a character that I would very much like to continue exploring, the truth is ”. A not far-fetched idea, because Commissioner Ruiz is the protagonist of several of González Harbour's novels, as Nieto says, there is a lot left for her to explore. For this character, "the police told us that these types of agents existed, that they had a special gift for knowing how to direct cases, for guessing things, for knowing when they were interrogating who was lying and who was not."
The most typical thing in these cases is that the Church passes a veil, does everything possible to hide it and if the police investigation is already very advanced and there is no way to continue denying it, the solution is to make it appear that no one knew anything and remove from its activity to the person accused of pedophilia. “I am convinced that there are many people who are not in favor of this concealment. This is a bad decision by certain groups within the church that we are seeing that all they do is not be transparent and give a dark image of the church that does not have to be. If in civil society there are also cases of pedophilia and sexual abuse and it is punished, in religious institutions it should be like that. And there are still many cases. But I think that little by little they will come to light,” explains Macías, who is quite optimistic about the possibility of changing things, even though it may be a very slow process.
