The filmmaker Adrian Orr has defended the normalization of racial and sexual diversity in his second feature film, ‘To our friends’, since the leading actress, Sara Toledo, is mulatto and in the filma has a homosexual relationship.
“It is true that Sara is a racialized person and in the film she is a lesbian, but it is one more element that is told in the film, although it is not treated as the central theme. I believe that the way to treat someone with the greatest equality is to look at them from admiration and affection, and that is what I have done with Sara.“said the director in an interview with Europa Press, asked about the lack of roles for black actresses and LGTBI characters in fiction.
Orr has insisted that the intention has been “not to think of Sara as a racialized character, nor to see her as an LGTBI character.” “Nowadays, it is true that it is difficult to watch films with specific characters as protagonists, but this will surely change over the years.“, has underlined.
The film has recently premiered in the international competition of Visions du Réel (Switzerland), and stars a cast that is mostly debutants in cinema. The filmmaker adds that in the film he has vindicated the “edges” of social classes in his second feature film, ‘To Our Friends’.
“In the film I try to claim the social class of the protagonists and how that influences your evolution as a person or how you think, despite the fact that today it seems that classes no longer exist and that everything is middle class,” he noted.
For some years, Adrián Orr has filmed the life of Sara Toledo, who has doubts about her future when she appears for the selectivity exam and who feels that she is moving away from her usual friends in her neighborhood. Adrian Orr states that it is a documentary-type film that mixes some fictional stories. “I use cinema in the freest way to capture the truth of the protagonists,” he says.
During the film, we see how the passage of time passes through the life of Sara Toledo and, despite the difficulties, the young woman maintains the “desire” and the “energy” to make a change in her life. “The protagonist shows that energy and desire of when you are almost an adult and you are not satisfied with anything, you want to change everything, and you have many concerns,” the director has detailed.
In this sense, Orr has acknowledged that he sees himself “a little” reflected in the character of Sara, in terms of the “desire to change everything, but not knowing very well how to do it.” “I think that making this film has also been a bit of a way to infect us with that energy,” she said.