2008’s One Word from You [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] was the most recent release by Ángeles González Sinde (Madrid, 1965). Now, after having been kept busy by a range of other tasks (including serving as Minister of Culture and a screenwriter for TV), the filmmaker is back in the director’s chair with El comensal [+leggi anche:
trailer
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intervista: Guillermo Benet
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intervista: Gracia Querejeta
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An adaptation of the novel of the same name, written by Gabriela Ybarra, El comensal will tell the story of how youngsters Icíar (played by Abaitua) and Fernando (Oyagüez) endure the most traumatic experience of their short lives: the loss of one of their parents. But Fernando and Icíar are unable to share their pain or the strategies they use to cope with it, as they live in different time periods: he lives in Bilbao in 1977, dealing with the kidnapping of his father at the hands of terrorist group ETA. She, meanwhile, lives in Navarre in 2011, coming to terms with her mother’s (Ozores) sudden, terminal cancer. As a result of this unexpected bereavement, the woman becomes aware of the murder of her grandfather, whom she never knew. Faced with her father’s (García Millán) refusal to talk about the subject, the woman goes it alone and decides to reconstruct the tense days of that kidnapping. Thanks to her efforts to shed light on the family's memories, Icíar and her father will come together and come up with a new way of looking at the past to experience the future.

El comensal is the story, told in first person, of two different ways of confronting the consequences of 40 years of violence: either looking at it dead in the eye or remaining silent simply to survive. “The perceptiveness of Gabriela Ybarra is very characteristic of a new, younger generation, born in the midst of democracy and yearning for another model of social coexistence. The beauty of her story stems from connecting the meticulous narration of the intimate family relationship and her mother’s illness with the social coexistence of terrorism and the consequences it brought about when it dictated a particular way of interacting both within and outside of the family,” stated the writer-director, who made her debut in 2003 with La suerte dormida, for which she picked up the Goya Award for Best New Director.

“They say that in my family, an additional diner always sits at the table for each meal. They’re invisible, but they’re there. They have their own plate, glass and cutlery. Every now and then, they appear, cast their shadow on the table and erase one of the other diners present. The first one to disappear was my paternal grandfather,” explained the author of the original novel.

El comensal is being produced by Okolin Producciones Cinematográficas AIE, Tornasol and Enbabia Films, and it boasts the involvement of RTVE.