Every film of Jonás Trueba (Madrid, 1981) is different: the way they’re researched, made and even distributed and shown. Each one is an adventure and a new exploration, a new way to think the takes, the narrative, the time… However, they all share a great passion for cinema and an extraordinary attention towards whatever is loved by filmmaking: faces, stories, words, locations, colours, light…
La reconquista is Jonas Trueba’s fourth feature film, and as others past and future, made with an accomplice team, ‘Los ilusos films’: Laura Renau (costumes), Lorena Tudela (director’s assistant), Miguel Ángel Rebollo (art), Santiago Racaj (DOP), Marta Velasco (editing), Edu Castro (sound editing and mixing), Javier Lafuente (production).
The actors, too, are part of the family: Francesco Carril (main actor of Los ilusos, Los exiliados románticos and two previous films and of others to come), Itsaso Arana (main actress of La virgen de agosto and others to come), Aura Garrido (in Los ilusos), and Pablo Hoyos and Candela Recio, who performed Quién lo impide.
Los exiliados románticos (2015), preceding La reconquista, was shot in 12 consecutive days, during a trip between Madrid, Toulouse and Annecy, as a road movie and with a small team. The one that followed, Quién lo impide, is an ambitious project inspired by the meeting with the young actors of La reconquista, shot since 2016 and along five years by Jonás Trueba. In 2018 it takes shape in four independent pieces; 2021 is an extraordinary 220-minute film.
La reconquista is a film that took a long time to conceive and mull over. It was shot in a few but carefully selected locations around Madrid, in two parts. The first filming sessions took 13 days, between August 18 and September 2, 2015 and it deals with the love story of Olmo and Manuela, when they were fifteen years old. The second part was shot in of 16 days, between December 14, 2015 and January 9, 2016: Olmo and Manuela meet again and by then, they’ve in their thirties.
Because of the singularity of his creative process, Jonás Trueba along with his team get to generate a myriad compelling material of immense beauty: the film is ‘foraged’ and built around remarkable settings, lights, sound and colours, images and words… His films are conceived during summer rehearsals with young and older casts, following scripts in progress, written after leisurely wanders with Miguel Ángel Rebollo: visual scripts born from references such as paintings, photographs, films, objects, places, and brief colourful scripts, with precious palettes created by Laura Renau… The shooting is organized along Lorena Tudela’s documents. The editing is explored on paper with Marta Velasco.
Jonás Trueba found out about Inside Cinema when he was preparing the film. At once he enthused about it and got involved, sharing the materials herewith published.
