Gonzalo Suárez Garayo’s first documentary premieres at the 66th Seminci

Gonzalo Suárez Garayo released his first documentary, A cero.5 [At 0.5], at the 66th edition of the Valladolid International Film Festival. After 15 years creating the feature-length documentary, the director from Vigo presented his audio-visual work at a special screening in company of his producer, Juan de Dios Serrano.

In November 2006, his life took a 180-degree turn, an event that marked the milestone of the beginning of his film work. After suffering a car accident, Suárez decided to pick up a camera and gather as much information as he could about his day-to-day life. “It was a guerrilla-type documentary that I came up with on my own just because I did,” said the director. “I was filming for almost thirteen years with a self-production where at certain times I would turn to friends or former students to film things that I couldn’t film on my own,” he added.

The audio-visual composition captures his return to Vigo after completing his rehabilitation process, where he started playing basketball in a wheelchair so as not to be alone. In the famous Vigo wheelchair basketball club Amfiv, he found a story to tell about the spectacular clashes between the chairs, the falls, the speed, the harshness, the enormous competitiveness and the companionship. And the work that began two weeks after that accident can continue.

After years of documenting his life, A cero.5 came to the production company Agalla Films, “I met Juan de Dios and Paula Cons and they liked the product or my intentions and we started working for three and a half years to get here,” said Gonzalo Suárez. In addition, the director expressed his happiness at being able to be part of the 66th edition of Seminci, “you feel that you have made it, that you have managed to finish the film, which is the hardest thing,” said the Vigo-born director. He also added that “it’s an immense joy to be able to bring it here to Valladolid, it was the goal we had set ourselves. It’s the first time that the public has seen it and we are delighted because we are receiving good feedback from people.”

“When talking about documentaries, it’s different,” Suárez pointed out. “The support of festivals is essential so that people hear about the film and want to watch it, because it doesn’t have the publicity of fiction films,” he stressed. “It will probably be in cinemas in 2022, but it will be a limited release,” says the filmmaker, “for now, we want it to participate in other festivals and to tour as much as possible,” he concluded.