The Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Martins has presented ‘Vicentina pede desculpas (On Behalf of My Son)’ in the Official Section of the San Sebastián Festival, a film about grief, family and the difficulty of expressing feelings that calls for empathy and human connection in the face of a society marked by immediacy and “noise.”
“People are very self-conscious within their humanity,” said the director, who believes that there is a need to be “constantly demonstrating physical and moral well-being,” something that “does not correspond to the violence of the world.”
According to Martins, trying to find empathy or connection with another person can seem like “a somewhat silly or unimportant gesture,” when precisely it should be a way of looking inward and questioning the image that each person has of themselves. “People lie. People are afraid of saying something for which they can be judged,” said the filmmaker, who places this difficulty in showing oneself as one is at the center of the film.
The film invites the viewer to enter “a different time”, far from the accelerated pace of today’s life, according to producer Thiago Macedo, who explained that during production they even debated the beginning of the film, considering that its pace was slower than what a platform usually demands.
However, they decided to maintain that cadence because the film had to invite the public to “leave the world outside” and enter another time, a proposal that runs through the entire film and seeks to lead to reflection on human contact, empathy and the different ways of facing grief.
Along the same lines, Rejane Faria, protagonist of ‘Vicentina pede desculpas’, has defended the recovery of a relationship time that, in his opinion, has been lost with social networks. The actress has highlighted the silences and prolonged moments of the film as a way of returning to the viewer “the desire to relate to others” and recovering a possibility of encounter that “now is not heard, is not practiced.”
Television is precisely another of the elements that the film uses to address this public exposure. Martins has explained that the film has real television presenters because the image that is projected of Vicentina when she appears on screen works as a “mirror” of her own identity and the society that surrounds her. “When something very serious happens in a person’s life, the entire process should be much more respectful and calm,” he noted.
The film is based on the director’s own personal experiences, who has incorporated memories and people around him into the story. Martins has explained that some characters are linked to people close to him, such as a friend he lost in a car accident or an aunt who died at the age of 19 and whose death remained silent for years within her family. “I do not believe in cinema, in making films as an experience distant from life,” he stated, defending a cinema connected to what affects him in his daily life.
For her part, Rejane Faria has explained that playing Vicentina took her directly into the realm of motherhood and fear for her children. Her character is going through a pain that the actress has defined as “inexplicable”, but which she faces trying not to fall. “She tries to stay on her feet,” said Faria, for whom Vicentina’s journey consists of finding a way to live with that pain and progressively alleviate her suffering until she can continue with her life.