The director of the opening film ‘They Will Be Dust’, Carlos Marques-Marcet: ‘We should start talking about death earlier’

• The director, accompanied by the actors Ángela Molina and Alfredo Castro, and the singer María Arnal, has presented in Valladolid the film that opens tonight the 69th edition of SEMINCI at the Calderón Theatre.

Valladolid, 18 October 2024. A glimpse into the ending of life that the director Carlos Marques-Marcet (10.000 km., The Days to Come) tackles in his film They Will Be Dust inaugurates tonight the 69th edition of the Valladolid International Film Festival (SEMINCI). The plot presents a woman, played by Ángela Molina, who decides to travel to Switzerland with her husband to end her life. A story of death, but also of unconditional love, in which the singer María Arnal and the dance company La Veronal have collaborated.

Marques-Marcet decided to investigate the end of life after learning of the existence of a clinic in Switzerland aimed at helping those who voluntarily wished to stop living. ‘This led us to think about how to approach death; something that is so difficult, because it is deciding how to talk about something that is the end of oneself. I think we should start talking about death earlier. The sooner the better, right?’

Actress Ángela Molina faced the responsibility of playing a woman who decides to abandon her children before their time and, moreover, accepts that her husband also makes that decision. ‘I love myself in this story; when he makes that decision, it creates a dilemma in me and a beastly development, because I also have children and I know that, in a sense, they can feel helpless’.

On the decision to die voluntarily, he stated during the presentation of the film at SEMINCI: ‘I think that it is the same journey for everyone, and there are as many deaths as there are people. I think that everyone has to take responsibility for the relationship that has to be established with the real idea that we have to make a journey that comes close to our own dignity and if possible do it as we wish and with a smile of gratitude, because life and love are greater than death’.

The director agreed with Ángela Molina that love and death are closely linked, which is why he also set out to investigate the limits between love and dependence in the script he co-wrote with Clara Roquet and Coral Cruz. ‘We depend on other people, and sometimes that dependence can be very toxic. I don’t have an answer, but I was very interested in finding that limit. Love is not always unconditional’.

‘Personally, I think it’s a film about love rather than death,’ said co-star Alfredo Castro, the Chilean actor who plays Ángela Molina’s husband. ‘It is mainly about a love without barriers, which surpasses children and surpasses the love of life’. And he added that, in his opinion, the film also tackles other issues such as migration, homosexuality and euthanasia. This has forced him to ‘go through places in acting that were unknown to him until now’, but he let himself be carried away by the freedom granted by the director and by Ángela Molina: ‘She is very generous, very spontaneous and sincere, and I had to follow her wherever she went’.

In They Will Be Dust, which won the award for best film in the Platform section at the Toronto Festival, Marques-Marcet combines the language of film with that of music and dance. María Arnal provides the music, while the company La Veronal, directed by Marcos Morau, participates in a key scene, for the director, in which, ‘They have a way of approaching the dark, the ineffable, but also with a strange, absurd humour, which I think they are the only ones who could give it that tone’.

The film is a co-production between Spain, Italy and Switzerland, which is why eight languages were spoken during the shooting, according to producers Ariadna Dot, Marques-Marcet’s regular collaborator, and Giovanni Pompili.

The filmmaker admitted, ‘You have to take a gamble’. ‘I’m not necessarily in favour of provocation, but I do try to generate questions and trust that the viewers will follow me’.

Press contact:
983 42 64 60 prensa@seminci.com

www.seminci.com