In 2018 Sandra Bullock blindfolded herself faced a post-apocalyptic future in which a mysterious supernatural presence was pushing a large part of society to suicide in Blindfolded, a film directed by Susane Bier that immediately ranked as the most watched of Netflix -almost five years later it remains the third on the list-. The success of the film has pushed the streaming platform to now sign the brothers Álex and David Pastor to take the reins of a spin-off that places the story in a deserted Barcelona where Mario Casas tries to survive that devastating annihilation alongside his daughter and also allying himself with other survivors played by Lola Dueñas, Michelle Jenner, Patrick Criado, Gonzalo de Castro, the Mexican Diego Calva or the British Georgina Campbell.
Bird Box Barcelona, which arrives on Netflix this July 14 after its massive premiere at the Tivoli theater on June 29, goes beyond the interesting foray into science fiction of the Pastor in Infected (2009), with Chris Pine leading the cast and panic in the form of a mysterious disease that threatened Barcelona a decade ago in Los últimos días, starring Quim Gutiérrez and José Coronado.
The film surprises with the level of special effects and the display of a ghostly city surrounded by voices that dangerously invite you to remove your blindfolds and see what is ahead. "When entering the digital world, the film grows a lot, especially outdoors and I had the opportunity to see destroyed streets as we see in the film. When you arrived on the shooting set you really got into the skin of the character in a direct visual way almost without interpreting. I've been blown away by it," Mario Casas, who has shot his latest films in Barcelona, including the thriller Hogar con los Pastor, and a large part of his directorial debut, My Solitude Has Wings, tells La Vanguardia. , which hits theaters in August. "Barcelona is in my veins. I lived here from the age of four to 18, I have my grandmother and many friends in this city and it's true that I always end up recording here. I love coming here".
The actor hallucinated with Bullock's film - "it reached the public very well and has many fans" - and when he received the script from the Pastors he did not hesitate to get fully involved in the project: "It was a gift and I was very attracted to the character of Sebastián, a father of a family who is walking through these streets of post-apocalyptic Barcelona with his daughter, and especially when we return to the past and gradually discover things about him, those shadows, those lights and nuances that he carries, that emotion and everything. what's happened to him. There's like a shadow on him, you don't know exactly what's wrong with him, and I was interested to find out why he behaves this way."
Casas speaks wonders of the two girls who appear in the film, Alejandra Howard, his daughter in fiction, and the German Naila Schuberth, a little girl who is looking for her mother and who is protected by the woman played by Campbell. "I clung to that light, that energy that they gave off because they give purity and that reaches the public. The truth is that I had a great time with them."
The Goya winner for You Will Not Kill admits that he wears out the emotional part more than the physical part of the performance. And that it is not easy to disconnect from the role once the directors shout cut!. "I was in the same clothes for four months. But I took a shower, huh? It's something I like to do when I shoot and from the first moment it helps me to be in character and I don't get out of it. It also helps in the team. Just like leave me a beard and long hair. I like to compose from the physical," he says.
He is also happy with the multicultural cast that Bird Box Barcelona boasts. "It was a very interesting mix and the feeling was that we were all immersed in a project that excited us." Casas speaks English and German very well in the film. "German is the most complicated thing there is and it scared me. I rehearsed the scenes I had a lot, I had a coach and Nayla took care of me and told me "Gut, gut!" I was interested in her understanding me because she is the one who I had to understand and that reassured me a lot. Because it was not only the phonetics, but transmitting the emotion".
The actor believes that in a situation as surreal as the one presented in the film "it is difficult to guess how people would act because each person is different", although he dares to venture that "there would be a lot of selfishness, that people would look out for themselves, for survive, and there would also be someone who would look out for others, that pearl that is always there taking care of others. But it is true that such extreme situations often bring out the worst in human beings".
It is an opinion shared by Georgina Campbell, who is working for the first time in Spain. "The script came to me through my agent and I thought it was incredible. I had already come to Barcelona on vacation before and I really wanted to return," says the actress, winner of the 2015 Bafta award for best television performer for Murdered by my boyfriend. She plays Claire, a psychiatrist who is "very empathetic and optimistic about this new world that they have and sees the best in others, which is sometimes good and sometimes not so good."
The Briton praises Bullock's performance in the original film and stresses that on set "we had bandages where you could see a little bit and others where you couldn't see anything and what you were trying to do was not be too clumsy, know where Everyone was there. But it was fun," he recalls with a laugh. Claire carries a complicated family past: "Those things take our fears and twist them," she explains to Sebastián in the film.
Diego Calva, known for his role in Damien Chazelle's Babylon, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, was interested in "exploring the horror genre" and says that "it's been a lot of fun working with the Pastors. I think who are geniuses of suspense and, in addition, they are very sweet". His role is that of Octavio, "someone completely practical who only thinks about surviving and I like to think that he is like a Mexican migrant who was suddenly caught by the apocalypse."
Calva, 31, confesses to being a zombie movie lover, would like to work with Álex de la Iglesia and affirms that his experience in Hollywood "was complicated, challenging, but I agree that the language doesn't matter so much because he didn't speak very well English when I arrived in the United States, like I did speak the same language as them, which was the language of cinema. I realized that what I did in my country and in Hollywood was the same". She has now just finished On Swift Horses, with Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones, and says she is "thrilled about my second Hollywood movie."
