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Ciclo
Father
De Tereza Nvotová
Cine
Cine
“The only way to sustain a process like this is by relinquishing any attempt at control, allowing cinema to adapt to life and not the other way around, because only by embracing uncertainty can we truly capture the bond, the passage of time, and the deep emotion of being alive.”
At that first meeting with Ángel, something as simple as an interview turned into a promise and later into a relationship that lasted for years. What made you feel there was something unique about him, something worth continuing to record beyond that moment?
There are encounters that profoundly change the trajectory of life, and that’s what happened with Ángel that day at the Nanawa market. I think what is singular has to do with the encounter itself, with the consistency of what is produced in that “in-between.” It is hard to explain what that is made of—it needs time.
Ángel struck me as incredible from the very first moment, and also the fact that a child could so easily establish a peer-to-peer complicity with an adult, that’s not very common. That day, when Ángel stayed with me the whole afternoon, as we were saying goodbye, he told me that maybe we were long-lost siblings and that we should get a DNA test. For me, that is no small thing—feeling like someone is your sibling is a torrent of such beautiful emotion. How could I not persist in continuing, in doing something? Things like that don’t happen every day.
The film is built in an “in-between”: between you and Ángel, between the one filming and the one being filmed, between two countries, two languages, two ways of inhabiting time. How was it for you to sustain a project that not only portrays a bond but also lives it and transforms it as it unfolds?
I believe sustaining this was not only my task. From the beginning, together with Lucas Olivares, with whom I signed as co-director, and Liz Haedo, who was also fundamental to the process, we committed ourselves to ensuring that perseverance was more about the bond with Ángel than about thinking of making a film. Later, Eugenia, our producer, joined us, and her presence was also key, and of course Ángel, who in all these years never abandoned or stopped believing in this madness of making a film as we lived.
I think this encounter profoundly changed our lives, and far from any idealization, loving someone sometimes also means giving up a certain peace, being in constant turmoil at many moments. It is somewhat unspeakable, the rollercoaster of emotions, of questioning, of doubts, but also of great joys.
To me, the only way to sustain a process like this is by relinquishing any attempt at control, letting cinema adapt to life and not the other way around. It is a way of being that embraces uncertainty.
Unlike many documentaries, The Prince of Nanawa does not seek a traditional dramaturgy or moments of impact. How was it to conceive the editing from that logic of the vital, the affective, even the erratic, in order to avoid falling into an imposed narrative form?
There is something in the recorded material, and in the decision of what to record and what not to, that often stands a bit apart from certain events that could have been strongly impactful. I feel that it is precisely the intimacy that was built between us that was more about reflecting on something that happened, about going a little back over life or over what had occurred—an exercise that the complexity of daily life too often sweeps away or simply does not allow, and that the film established almost like a ritual.
Moreover, I think none of us, including our editor Florencia Gómez García, was on the side of impact. There is an entire system configured around this logic, where such narratives generate more paralysis than anything else—I feel we are very far from that form.
I think the editing makes room for a feeling that is difficult to accommodate in daily life and that cinema can still return to us every so often: the shock of being face to face with time. For me there is something very liberating and at the same time tremendous in that act of confronting time.
Sharing, growing, loving, living—it is all full of moments that may seem insignificant, not impactful. Living is a great wandering. And yet, narratives and editing often force impact and weave a plot that is quite hostile to singular rhythms. The editing sought not to align with that trend, but rather to stay on the side of what happens in the moment, in the potency of a scene, without necessarily forcing a thread with what comes next.
The film proposes an ethic of care, a way of making cinema that does not extract but accompanies. How did you think about and manage the tension between recording someone’s life without appropriating it, between being present and not invading?
For me and for Lucas, a film is nothing more than the ways in which it is made. It is very hard for us to think of a work as an end in itself, and to believe that anything that happens during the process can be justified by the ultimate goal of the work. I think The Prince of Nanawa carries something of a manifesto—not declared as such, because we’ve had enough of manifestos—but still something we share among ourselves in relation to the ways we invented to move away from that idea of cinema that always sees itself as saving something. There is a lot of megalomaniac cinema, and that is dangerous.
This was perhaps a feat, but without epic, where the idea of the work never stood above life, and at times we even forgot we were making a film. I think this is closely tied to a conviction: what sense does this kind of cinema have if it doesn’t generate an experience of empowerment for the lives of those involved in making it? Maybe it is quite another paradigm—the work itself doesn’t matter much to us. I think all the films we have made come from that place; they stand on the side of processes.
In a relationship built over so many years of being there, no one is trying to extract something to take away and then disappear—on the contrary. There is no appropriation; there is bond, encounter. It is about rehearsing another way of being within this exercise of making images. Above all, the film is the record of a bond over time, and in that, there is a shared agreement with Ángel.
Being present and not invading are things that get calibrated as time goes by, like in any relationship. But I say this speaking of affection and companionship; in terms of not invading with the camera, the decisions of what was recorded were always directed by Ángel. In that sense, the film is a great fragment of the lives of those of us who participated in this process, which of course overflows far beyond what can fit into a limited timeframe, even if it’s almost four hours long.
The passage of time is raw material in your film, but it is also an emotional trial. What did it mean for you to spend more than a decade accompanying someone and accepting that the film had no clear end?
I think it meant a radical change in life, in relation to cinema, a complete stripping away of the idea of control or the feeling that something can be managed. It was a process that plunged us into the abyss in every direction. The ending never worried us; what did concern us was ensuring that those of us making the film were okay in the face of the turbulences of daily life. There are experiences that are untransferable, that cannot fully be measured—and having the certainty that this vital commitment with Ángel will last a lifetime is something immense.
Also, the certainty of the friendship among those of us who made this and held it up against all odds is a very powerful force in life. When everything gets rough, I think of all these years of accompanying one another, and something already begins to clear, something feels like it might be possible.
At a moment so dominated by immediacy, algorithms, and ephemeral content, your film bets on duration, patience, and real time. Do you feel that this is also a political stance toward contemporary cinema?
Absolutely—it is a manifesto, a veiled protest against a way of existing and of making to which we do not want to belong. The possibility of inventing other ways, creating other rhythms and durations, of being in a different mode in that act of sharing life, is possible. If contemporary cinema feels completely expulsive to us, then we will create something else, something that feels a little more like being alive.
