Juan Diego Botto (‘On the edge’): “A film won’t change the world, but it can help ask questions”

Actor Juan Diego Botto jumps across the camera to write and direct his first feature film, ‘In the margins’, out in theaters on 7 October. The film, a real social cinema, contains three stories with a shared context: the more than 100 evictions a day that still occur today in our country and the lack of resources that the system has to help all those people at risk of social exclusion. There is nothing. Although it appears that evictions in Spain were a thing of the 2008-2014 economic crisis and now the problem is occupied employment (the great fallacy of selling alarms), in the first quarter of this year 11,072 families were left homeless. according to official data from the General Council of the Judiciary. “Perhaps the desire to tell this story arises from the feeling that there is a part of our reality that continues to happen, it exists, it is around us every day, but it is no longer seen. We have the feeling that it has disappeared, but it became chronic “Botto tells us, who hopes to give visibility to this problem already ignored by the media, “Perhaps it will help us to show solidarity with an aspect of our reality that we have forgotten and for this reason, too, in a certain sense, is what cinema is for”.

Cinema, like no art, has no responsibility for anything more than, if anything, to entertain, but it has great power, Botto acknowledges: “A film will not change the world, of course, but it can signal, underline, open a debate that exists, help ask questions, and sometimes it’s just that, asking us questions, doubting and questioning things. “ Who has the power are the institutions, and the coincidences of life, “Destiny wanted the film to come out when it comes to discussing the housing law, which could change the lives of thousands of people”says the manager.

“At the Edge” contains a scene that draws particular attention, an assembly of the Mortgage Affected Platform, PAH, featuring real people, not characters: “Olga Rodriguez, the co-writer and I have spent a lot of time, years, in the writing process living with people who have told us their stories and with social workers.”Botto tells us, “They are talking about their case as it was at the time and it was very nice to shoot, it was very nice to be able to mix professional actors with them, who were part of the story. On the one hand, they contributed to give greater credibility to this story, to give it a greater reality and, on the other, it served as a small tribute to their lives “. They did a special preview of the film for them at the headquarters of the Workers’ Commissions on September 28, which it was “the most beautiful”.

“Of the whole process, the day we introduced it to those affected was the best thing about this whole story. For me it was really closing a circle. To finish watching the film and seeing their hugs, their faces, their gratitude “You have counted our lives”, “Our lives are as they are”. I remember that Olga Rodriguez and I were listening to them and it was like “Well, here, now we can rest”, because somewhere there was the fear that they would say “It’s not like that”, “This was different” “admits relieved, “If we passed that test, everything else doesn’t matter.”

take back your accent

To star in ‘In the margins’, Botto had two huge stars, Penelope Cruz and Luis Tosar, but reserved a small role for himself as the husband of Azucena, the character of Cruz. He tells us that all of this about the directing launch started as a proposal from the actress to work together, although it later morphed into the film she now presents to us. In it Botto appears rather little, but when he does we hear him speak with an Argentine accent, his native accent of him, a very well thought out decision: “One of the parts that we were missing and that I think is important and that we have more or less tried to make present is the immense multiculturalism of Madrid, and the more popular the neighborhood, the more multicultural it is. Migration lives mainly in the working-class neighborhoods. […] It wouldn’t have been an honest report if there hadn’t been the presence of immigration “.

As for his influences, while acknowledging that there is not a single director in which he feels reflected, he cites some names such as Ken Loach, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Asghar Farhadi or Montxo Armendáriz. “On the Margins” will debut in theaters on October 7th.