‘Foremost by Night’, a “very free” film to narrate the pain of stolen babies

A very small project during the pandemic that has grown into a film. This is how Víctor Iriarte, programmer who has made the leap to directing, has defined his debut feature, Sobre todo de noche, in competition in the Official Selection and a story about stolen babies written with Isa Campo and starring Ana Torrent and Lola Dueñas that jumps between genres to offer a work that breaks with all kinds of expectations.

“I thought about making a very free film with tools that, for different reasons, have stopped being used”, said Iriarte in reference to the chapter structure, the voice-over or the superposition of texts with which a film about a black chapter of the history of Spain is structured during the presentation of the film to the media. “I believe that cinema is a free space that can address the story you want from wherever you want,” said the filmmaker from Bilbao, who thanked Isaki Lacuesta for his support to make this debut.

“It is no longer the pain of the loss of the disappearance of a child, but the violence that comes after, which is not to talk about it,” said Dueñas, who referred to the film as a “balm” for the victims. “I was not aware that this kept happening for so long; I was very shocked by that immunity”, Torrent said, and then defined those parents as “ghosts that no one sees, that no one wants to talk about”.