Ever since María (and Everybody Else) [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Nely Reguera
scheda film] was presented in the New Directors section of the San Sebastián Film Festival in September 2016, there has been a big buzz around the follow-up by its director, Nely Reguera. At last, the beginning of the shoot for The Volunteer [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda film] in Barcelona a few days ago confirms that her sophomore effort is under way. From mid-April, it will continue for six weeks in the Malakasa refugee camp (Athens), and its lead actress is popular thesp Carmen Machi, who appeared recently in It Snows in Benidorm [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Isabel Coixet
scheda film] and An Optical Illusion [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Juan Cavestany
scheda film].

Its cast is rounded off by Itsaso Arana (The August Virgin [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Jonás Trueba
scheda film]), Arnau Comas (Yesterday’s Two Nights [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film]), Dèlia Brufau, Yohan Levy and Henrietta Rauth. According to the screenplay, written by Reguera in league with Valentina Viso (One for All [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: David Ilundain
scheda film]) and Eduard Sola (Barcelona, nit d’hivern [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film]), Marisa (Machi), bored with her life as a retiree and tired of constantly comparing herself to her friends, who are already grandmothers, decides to travel to a refugee camp where, the way she sees it, they are in need of people exactly like her. Upon her arrival, she discovers a reality that she could never have imagined and which leads her to explore the boundaries between love and the need to feel useful.

According to the director, who, after her feature debut, directed several episodes of series such as Welcome to the Family and Valeria [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda series] (see the review), “The Volunteer tackles the complexity inherent in the act of loving and caring for others, and the desire to do so. We should all be able to look after others as well as ourselves. Taking care of each other is a task that unites us, helps us grow, makes us more human… The problem arises when we are not aware that, sometimes, that act is more a response to the need to fill a void or make up for some kind of shortfall than it is a pure act of sheer generosity.”

We called up producer Adrià Monés, of Fasten Films, who explained, “Getting this project off the ground has been a whole saga, as everything imaginable happened to us during production: we were going to shoot in a Greek camp, where we were location-scouting and working for a year, but they told us that the Chinese were buying it and they were closing it. Then COVID-19 hit along with its quarantines, and that affected us until we found the new camp. All of that delayed the shoot a great deal,” he stated.

“I loved María (and Everybody Else), which already talked about the fact that sometimes taking care of someone isn’t such an altruistic act after all, and occasionally, you end up doing more harm than good by doing so. This is also the case in the journey that Carmen Machi embarks on – her children are not giving her any grandchildren, and she gets obsessed with a boy and ends up causing a ruckus,” continued the producer. “It has Nely’s trademark humorous and, at the same time, dramatic tone, but it’s set against a political backdrop, a metaphor for what Europe is doing today with the refugees. The protagonist is resilient but at the same time relatable, human, emotional and genuine,” summed up Monés.

The Volunteer is a production by Spanish outfits Fasten Films and Bteam Prods (which won big at the most recent Goya Awards with Schoolgirls [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Pilar Palomero
scheda film]) and Greece’s Homemade Films. It boasts the involvement of RTVE, TV3 and Movistar Plus+; funding from the ICAA, ICEC and Eurimages; and backing from Creative Europe - MEDIA. Bteam Pictures will release it in Spanish movie theatres in 2022.