Cannes Film Festival: Cinema serves as my therapy: our interview with director Rodrigo Sorogoyen

“The Loved Ones” operates in layers. It evokes a difficult relationship between Esteban, an absent father, and his now adult daughter Emilia, the love story between this man and the mother from years ago but also the world of cinema. How do you manage to organize the story?

At first, there’s a main subject, then others naturally appear. This was also the case for “As Bestas”. The challenge is to make all these elements organic. The figure of the mother was crucial for us. She only appears in one scene, but she was much more present in the early versions of the script.

In the end, we preferred this balance: she is hardly seen, but we talk a lot about her and listen to her messages. She is the pivot of all the protagonist’s emotions.

How did this theme of fatherhood come about? Is it a need to explore family ties after your previous thrillers?

Isabel Peña, my co-writer, and I are both only children. We wanted to move away from the thriller or western genre to tell a human, normal story. Whether present or absent, everyone has a father.