Reflejos de la muerte en divertidas fábulas en Málaga

The director Santi Amodeo appeared on Thursday at the Malaga Film Festival 28 with his film «The Sky of Animals,» which is competing in the official competition section. It is a collection of impressionistic and fabulous stories about death.

The plot follows four stories of loss, based on the stories of David James Poissant. In them, the past, present, and future merge into an intimate portrait of grief.

Screenwriter and director Santi Amodeo, along with actresses África de Cruz and Paula Díaz, and actor Claudio Portalo, participated in a press conference about their work at Cinema Albéniz.

«These are very essential stories, but if you look at them realistically, they don’t fit anywhere. They are metaphors that mean other things,» explained the filmmaker, who celebrated that this allowed him to take more risks, «even knowing that if you take more risks, the reward can be greater.»

This is Amodeo’s third film dealing with death after «I, My Wife, and My Dead Wife» (2019) and «Las Gentiles» (2021), a coincidence that made the director reflect on the reasons for this theme.

«I thought why, if I am in a happy moment in my life… but maybe that’s why,» he said, «I feel strong to face an issue that carries weight.»

In this case, Amodeo was given the original book by American writer David James Poissant in Argentina, with whom he had «a connection»: «It was the issue of death in a way that really resonated with me and I tried to reflect on it in the film,» he said.

«In the film, all the stories are a bit impressionistic. In the book, there is a lot of detail, but I tried to keep them essential,» he compared. His approach to adapting it tried to incorporate into the setting the aspects of the story that naturally emerged when he spoke enthusiastically about the book.

The result is, according to Amodeo, some «almost metaphorical» stories packaged in a «story» atmosphere: «The moral is that our fears are what kill us,» he shared.

Actress Paula Díaz also confessed the complexity of approaching a story in which «there is no clear narrative line, but everything is fragmented»: «That makes the characters fragment in this way. When I saw the movie, I understood what Santi was looking for,» she said.

«The character’s development in rehearsals was very challenging due to the character’s traits, which we worked from a different place to the one shown in the film,» added Claudio Portalo.

On the other hand, actress África de Cruz emphasized the additional challenge of shooting on 16mm, a format that «changes a lot and is closer to theater,» she defined: «It really helps an actress to think about focus, it’s concentrated,» she concluded.

FUENTE