Jaione Camborda recently returned from the Toronto festival, where she presented her second feature, O Corno, in the Platform section, and yesterday the 40-year-old Basque filmmaker went to San Sebastián to defend this rural sorority drama in competition against the persecution of abortion in Galicia in 1971. Specifically, the action takes place in A Illa de Arousa, where María, a shellfish worker who lives alone, helps women in childbirth with great delicacy and care. Clandestinely, she is also known to provide services to other women to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. After an unexpected event, she is forced to flee and has no choice but to cross the border on one of the smuggling routes between Galicia and Portugal.
"The story arises from the need to explore as a woman the ability to conceive, to create. This animal and natural capacity of the human being. And part of many uncertainties that I wanted to explore in a cinematic way, without looking for rational answers, transiting in a more instinctive, emotional and artistic way and sharing these doubts with the viewer", points out the director, who has taken four years in the making "a foc lent" the first film in Galician that competes for the most important award of the Donostia competition. The director wanted to place the story in the seventies because "she wanted to work with characters very attached to the land as it was at that time, to portray a less medicalized birth that took place in rural areas and also because it is a dark era of prohibition, of control over women's bodies, and he saw it as important that all this dialogue with the present day".
O Corno will arrive in cinemas on October 11 and it stars the dancer Janet Novás (quite a discovery) and has in the cast also debutants Carla Rivas and Diego Anido. Camborda opted for Janet because he was looking for a "very physical" character and he knew her work as a contemporary dancer. He found in her "that inhabiting the body". Of the young Carla Rivas, gifted with eyes that convey everything, Camborda confesses that she is "very methodical and intelligent and, since she had no experience as an actress, I wanted her to appeal to her personal life and we worked with real emotions". To cause the abortion, María uses soaked rye. "Since it comes from nature, this method invited me to explore abortion with certain parallels to other scenes, such as childbirth or sex".
Although this 71st edition represents a milestone with three Spanish filmmakers heading for the Concha d'Or - the other two are Isabel Coixet and Isabel Herguera -, the director says that it is "a moment of celebration, despite the fact that it is late. Now good films about women are coming out because before they didn't let us make them", she says resignedly. Another director making her debut in competition is the Australian Kitty Green with The royal hotel, a thriller inspired by the documentary Hotel Coolgardie that delves into the exploration of the “discomfort of systemic violence” against women. Again with Julia Garner in the lead after shooting together the interesting The assistant, Green places on the screen two Canadian backpackers who run out of money and end up serving beers in a mining town in Australia, endure the jokes of bad taste and sexist behavior from customers. It goes without saying that the Australian men don't come off very well in the film - what will they think when they see it? - and there is no explicit violence. Of course, the tension grows at times. After watching Ozark, we already know how Garner spends it.
