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Lois Patiño, one of the leading lights of the New Galician Cinema in Spain, is putting the final touches to “Ariel,” the highly anticipated follow up to his critically-acclaimed feature ”Samsara” which has secured distribution in more than a dozen territories and won a Special Jury Prize at the Berlinale Encounters 2023.
A contemporary and playful reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” from the perspective of the character Ariel, the feature, produced by Spain’s Filmika Galaika with Portugal’s Bando à Parte, will be sneak-peeked for the first time ever at the inaugural ECAM Forum co-production market, set to run June 10-14 in Madrid.
Producer Beli Martínez said more than 80% of the financing is locked via broadcasting partners RTP in Portugal, TVG in Galicia, Spain, public funders AGADIC in Galicia and Spanish federal agency ICAA and Turismo de Portugal.
At ECAM Forum, she will be looking for post-production financing, distribution and sales.
“Ariel” is Patiño’s first full dive into fiction, after several contemplative and transcendent works, where he mixed documentary and sensorial exploration. Here, using a meta narrative, the filmmaker and artist blurs the lines between reality and fiction, life and representation. In this ambiguous space, actors – professionals and non-pros – play themselves and/or Shakespeare characters (as many as 60!), and nature – the striking Azores islands – turns into a theatre stage in itself.
In the title roles are Agustina Muños (“Viola”, “Sycorax”) and Irene Escolar (“An Autumn Without Berlin”, “The Girls Are Alright”).
The story turns on Agustina Muñoz, an Argentine actress (playing herself) as she heads off to the Azores Islands to perform in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, for the Galician theatre company Voadora. Upon her arrival, after a strange event on the ferry, she begins to observe singular behaviours in the island’s inhabitants. The appearance of a girl, Ariel, will guide her through this strange island, where the real and the imaginary, the dreamlike and the spectral, seem to merge.
Lois Patiño
Credit: Camilo Oviedo
Patiño spoke to Variety ahead of ECAM Forum.
At the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2021, your selected short film “Sycorax” co-directed with Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro, was already an exploration of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, through another character – the witch Sycorax. Why did you feel the urge to make a feature-length based this time on Ariel, the spirit of the air?
Patiño: The project of using “The Tempest” as inspiration started with Matías, as he has directed several Shakespeare-based features and we wanted to collaborate. But the idea for “Ariel” actually came before “Sycorax.”
Initially, we were supposed to co-direct “Ariel” as a short film, but we liked the idea so much that we agreed to expand it into a feature-length. However, because of COVID and our respective calendars, Matías couldn’t be part of this project. He went on instead to direct another feature [“You Burn Me”] which screened at the last Berlinale Encounters. We still had some coin left to make the feature length “Ariel” and had developed it for quite some time, so I said: O.K, I’ll do it solo. I readapted the full project to make it my own, although Matías stayed very close to it and is credited for the original idea with me.
Going back to “Sycorax,” at the time we had some development coin to do “Ariel”, and decided to make a short film with another character from “The Tempest”– the witch Sycorax. It was a kind of a pilot, to see how we could co-direct, before embarking on our joint feature-length.
What’s your own relationship to Shakespeare?Again, Matías and I were trying to find a common artistic interest. We saw in “The Tempest” a place where theatre, nature, the spirits and magic would collide. Personally, I was also interested to look for parallels between the existence of the characters and the one of spirits and ghosts, to explore the notion of suspended time. That limbo [explored in “Samsara”] is something that fascinates me.
Then while searching the play “The Tempest,” we found multiple interesting ideas and concepts. Ariel – the axis in the film– is the spirit of nature – fire, air and water. That animistic creature is also a theatre character, which we were keen to develop in her relationship with the dominating Prospero, from whom she tries to set free.
The notion of freedom is in fact one of the main themes– the freedom to be who you want and to be brave.
Can you expand on the meta language of the film, which echoes Shakespeare’s own metatheater, and your playful conceptualisation of Shakespeare’s work?Our characters in the film become aware of their reality as characters. They have to act in a play, and therefore aren’t free. They have to stick to Shakespeare’s vision of them as characters; They doubt their desires, their will, their fears.
I was also inspired by Luigi Pirandello’s play “Six Characters in Search of an Author” in which characters were abandoned and looked for an author to finish their play. They had existential problems and doubts.
Can you tell us about the casting of professional and non-professional actors and their Shakespearian contributions?Agustina Muñoz was there from the very start, as she is a regular to Matias’ work and starred in “Sycorax”. She is an amazing actress and human being.
With Irene [EscoIar], I had seen her in a film and felt she would be perfect to play against Augustina. She had studied English and is a better Shakespearean expert than me.
Both Agustina and Irene play variations of Ariel, and Agustina is also cast as herself. In fact, all professional actors play with their real names, and Voadora is a well-known Portuguese theatre company. They did their own contemporary version on stage of “The Tempest.”
My vision was to bring Shakespeare into the daily lives of the actors. Therefore next to the professional actors, we’ve asked local people, amateurs, to play Shakespearean characters (such as Othello, Hamlet) in a supermarket, in the hall of a hotel, in a parking, in a petrol station. We’ve basically used the 60+ people who came for the casting to inject life and humour to those iconic Shakespearian characters. I also played with stereotypes, by casting for example Lady Macbeth as a little girl, Romeo and Juliette as two girls, Prospero as a woman.
What eventually comes out from this playful explosion of Shakespeare characters in the film, is the strength of his text and poetry. Whatever the context, his words survive and are everlasting.
In your film you discuss the characters who are trapped on the island and into Shakespeare’s play. Did you feel trapped by Shakespeare’s literary canon?I saw what Matías did with his impressive body of work around Shakespeare’s plays and his films were broad variations. I think that the way to survive and stay alive as an artist, is to constantly adapt and innovate.
Shakespeare’s work is as timely as ever, and the key for me with this film, was to focus on the enlightenment that poetry brings to our lives.
To give life to Shakespeare’s words and poetry in the film, I’ve used a technique experimented in my earlier short film “The Sower of Stars” [Berlinale selected in 2022] whereby I assembled dialogues with various landmark authors as sources. Here, I’ve selected some of my favourite Shakespeare quotes to create Haiku, with beautiful images.
As a creator of a unique sensorial filmic experience, sound and image are quintessential. Who are your cinematographer and sound designer here?I’ve worked for the first time with DP Ion de Sosa [an ECAM graduate and teacher of cinematography, whose DP credits include “The Sacred Spirit” and “The Golden Legend”]. He uses humor in his craft, so I felt it would be fun to bring him in this conceptualization of Shakespeare’s universe. He brings a zest for humor that was lacking in my earlier works. Therefore “Ariel” is a fresh start with what I would call existential humor, or philosophical humor. Regarding the sound design, I’m working again with “Samsara”’s Xavier Erkizia.
Do you feel that “Ariel” is the next step in your growth as a filmmaker?“Ariel” was developed at the same time as “Samsara” although it’s very different. My other works were a mix of documentary and sensorial exploration to trigger new cinematic experiences. I’m very happy that this collaboration with Matías has helped me look for other aspects of storytelling and grow as a filmmaker. I feel I’ve made a beautiful film.
What will you show at ECAM Forum Madrid, and where are you in the post-production?We will show 40-50 minutes of footage. The full movie is around 148 minutes. We’re locking the sound design and sending the film to A-festivals for consideration.
