Alauda Ruiz de Azúa explores consent in marriage and sexual violence in the series ‘Querer’

The director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa explores consent in marriage and sexual violence in ‘To want‘, a series that is presented at the 72nd edition of the San Sebastián Festival out of competition, and which stars Nagore Aranburu, accompanied by a cast made up of Pedro Casablanc, Miguel Bernardeau, Iván Pellicer y Loreto Mauleón.

Ruiz de Azúa, at a press conference, explained that “there is a moment when, right from the writing, you begin to see as a director that you are going to have to capture many things that are invisible, but that are tangible, that do touch us, that do hurtwhich do tense, which do make uncomfortable and the language of cinema is a wonderful vehicle to do that, to feel the tension that can exist between two actors, to take that distance and understand how certain power relationships work in a family“.

Thus, he highlighted that the format of the series “allowed us to make some very radical and very abrupt ellipses that seemed to me to be very interesting from the beginning, putting the viewer in a place where they had to fill in the gaps.” .

The Basque filmmaker has pointed out that The issue of consent in marriage seemed to him “a field still to be explored” and he pointed out that when accepting the project, “many questions” arose, which even made him “a little dizzy”, but that he wanted to.

“I started to think about how that happens in a couple, if you start with a traditional courtship and why that process, that relationship, goes through until suddenly you reach a scenario of sexual violence.. “I was wondering at what point someone starts prioritizing the other’s desire over their own or at what point you stop consenting to give in,” he added.

Likewise, Ruiz de Azúa has detailed that in the investigation to carry out the project they spoke with “judges, lawyers, victims” and has highlighted that “emotionally we learned how to break down many prejudices, many inertias.”

“VERY RIGOROUS” TRIAL

Furthermore, he explained that he wanted to capture “a very rigorous judgment” in the series in the sense of “to be able to live and offer the viewer how a case like this is judged today, what happens in that room and that would question him and talk about how we judge things.

The Biscayan director has assured that she is “in a very beautiful moment, very fortunate to be able to choose” what she does, but, as she has said, she is moved by the stories and conflicts that interest her and where she feels that she has something that she can explore. So, It’s about “rather listening to the story what it asks, not so much thinking about I want to make a movie or I want to make a series.”

For his part, Nagore Aramburu has indicated that he has tried to “portray something that would reach a lot of people, a story of a woman, to put myself in her shoes and empathize with her”, while at the same time he has reported that “The work has been intense but also very joyful.”