That of the Spanish director and actress Icíar Bollaín I am Nevenka (Nevenka Soya), which premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival and runs until Saturday, tells the story of Nevenka Fernández (played by Mireia Oriol), the first Spanish woman to be convicted of sexual harassment against a politician.
The case that made headlines in Spain in 2001, long before the #MeToo movement, involved Ismael Álvarez (played in the film by Urko Olazabal), the popular and powerful mayor of Ponferrada who had appointed the young Fernández to his team as a finance advisor.
Soon, she ends up being “relentlessly pursued by the mayor, a man accustomed to getting what he wants both politically and personally,” notes a synopsis on the San Sebastian film festival website. “Nevenka decides to report him, knowing it will cost her dearly. A story based on real events that turns its main character into a precursor of the #metoo movement because she was the first person to take an influential politician to court for sexual and work-related harassment.”
It is important to note that the director tells the story from the point of view of the victim who ends up confronting the politician's wide sphere of influence, with continuous phone calls, text messages and notes that range from anger, to insults, to pleas, to compliments, to contempt.
Bollaín spoke with DAY on how he approached the story to show the perspective of molestation victims, using the terrifying sound of an old Nokia cell phone, on why he couldn't shoot the film in the city where it all happened, and on the results achieved by the #MeToo movement.
I experienced your film as a very emotional journey that made me feel worried, scared, shocked and more, sometimes at the same time. You also showed Nevenka's internal struggle and her journey through obvious changes in her appearance: from a young, professional-looking woman ready to take on big responsibilities to a fragile, scared person who doesn't want to leave the house. And you used lighting to further emphasize the change. How important was it for you to add these visual elements to the nuanced work of the actors?
There is an incredible work by the actors who work throughout this journey. There is also the work of the make-up artist, the hairdresser, the wardrobe [team] which shows changes such as hair deterioration, little by little. [Mireia Oriol] she is a thin woman. Yet, we have tried to hide that thinness until the moment we really see it [at the height of her struggles]. And yes, there is also the work with light, as you said. So everyone was trying, with their different tasks, to help the actress go through that process of deterioration, and then come out of it again.
There are some scenes that reminded me a bit of a horror movie. At the beginning, for example, you hear an old cell phone ringing. The ringing of that phone and the text message alerts are a recurring sound in the film that increasingly sound like a warning of a lurking monster. Did the entire film come out more or less as planned or were there any scenes or elements that surprised you on set?
When you're shooting, you try to find all those moments and hope it works. And then the first time I saw the film, I thought, “Well, it works.” You feel sorry for Nevenka. I think [Mireia] it's amazing. And you're afraid of this man, which is also great.
But along the way there were all sorts of discoveries. For example, the sound of the telephone was not so present in history [originally]. But then suddenly we thought, well, this is an element: the sound of the Nokia phone becomes like a nightmare. So we made some discoveries in the editing process about how to emphasize this psychological terror.
Sexual harassment has been in the spotlight in recent years with #MeToo. This story you tell happened in Spain much earlier. How did you want to show the audience new emotional levels and insights?
There has been a lot of talk about #MeToo. Thank God we have learned about all those cases. But I am surprised. There are not many films that tell how it feels to be in a situation of harassment. There is the wonderful film She said (directed by Maria Schrader and written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, based on the 2019 book of the same name by The New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey on their investigation into Harvey Weinstein), but it is about the journalists who investigated the story.
I thought there was very little that focused on the victims and obviously never on the real situations. So I thought I should try to show what it feels like to be there and try to convey that fear, that terror, that not knowing what this guy is going to do. There’s that confusion that you get yourself into. I think it’s hard to understand how you get paralyzed by a molestation trial, how it constantly puts you in a state of confusion, a state of paralysis. So, I thought it was worth a try. Especially because this case was in the media and there was a two-week court trial. There was a moment where we thought, “Well, should we go through that show?” But then we thought, no, let’s tell it in a way that it hasn’t been told yet because it’s not that common.
The film includes scenes of people in the city saying, “Oh, poor mayor. This woman, it's her fault.” And it looks like old television footage. Was it archive footage or did you just make it look that way?
Yes, there are these types of video clips and footage that were part of the extraordinary story of this woman, and she faced a very hostile reaction from the media and from Spanish society that was very hostile at that time. So we wanted to bring that in because it is part of the story. So we have two types of images: we used the actual footage of those people on the street, and then others are with some of our actors, like when she enters her press conference or he does his press conference. Those are our actors, but the rest, including the news anchors, are [archival] filmed.
This was a small town of 60,000 people, and he was a very heavy personality: he was loved because he was a mayor who had changed the situation in the city. He had opened and modernized the city, so he had many followers. But what he also did was send a letter, 60,000 letters, to every mailbox. He had an army that put in people's mailboxes a letter six pages long, explaining his position. [of the story].
What do you think about the state of society and the protections against harassment? Do you see any improvement?
I think there is an improvement in the way society perceives victims. I think the reaction to victims is different now, in Spain it is definitely different. Now we are seeing this horrible case in France of this woman [Gisèle Pelicot] who was raped 100 times by 50 men organized by her husband — it's incredible. And the public reaction now is very clear: they are very much with her. I think the #MeToo movement has broken the silence and, finally, there is sympathy for the victims.
But there are still all these stories that come out, each more horrific than the last. So I think it’s still a big, big problem, and it’s costing lives. It’s costing the lives of many, many women around the world. In some countries, it’s even gone beyond that, it’s just state violence against women, like in Afghanistan. So I think it’s a big problem that still needs a lot, a lot of work, but at least for me, there’s not this hostile response, socially, to victims. We’ve changed in the sense that we understand what consent means, what harassment means.
Icíar Bollaín at the San Sebastian Film Festival 2024
Courtesy of Jorge Fuembuena/San Sebastian Film Festival
How much input did you get from the real Nevenka for the film?
We thought from the beginning that we should have her on board. I didn't want to do this story without her recognition, permission and participation. So my co-author [Isa Campo Villar] and I met her at a very early stage, and we were in constant exchange with her. We had a lot of conversations with her. We did research and talked to people around her: the lawyer, the psychoanalyst, her husband, friends. We talked to everyone, including people in the city, and then we came back to her. So it was a constant conversation.
She just saw the movie recently. And she says she's very much on board. I mean, the script was our script, our ideas and our artistic approach, but she was always very generous, giving us feedback on the story.
I like the title and the scene in the movie where she tells her attacker not to call her by nicknames and pet names, because “I am Nevenka.” Please tell me a little about the importance of this aspect in your empowerment process.
Her nickname at home is Quenka, that's just what her family calls her. The thing is, he's her boss, and the man just keeps that name and then even turns it into Quenki, Quenkina. It's like “little Quenka,” belittling her more and more. So here's his statement: I'm not that little girl anymore.
Have you ever heard of the real Ismael during production?
We tried to shoot in the actual city. And the thing is, he's still a powerful man. He's still a big shot there. He still has his restaurants and his clubs and all that stuff. And the local government is very close to him. So when we asked permission to shoot there, there was silence. It wasn't a “no,” it wasn't a “yes,” it was just silence. So as the weeks went by, we said, “Okay, we'll have to find another place.” We figured out what the silence meant.
But often movies aren't shot where they're set and happen, and that's not a big deal. I would have loved to do it there because it's a very specific place, and it has a castle, which is incredible, and it happened there. But in the end, we shot it nearby, in a different city.
I was not aware of this case before. What would you like the audience in Spain and elsewhere to take away from seeing your film?
I think it's a film that speaks to you in many ways. I want the audience to feel what it's like to be in the nightmare of harassment. But I also think that as a woman, you recognize things before the most extreme moments of harassment, but you want to please. Why the hell do we have this culture of constantly pleasing?! And I think men can recognize things too, maybe not at the extreme of Ismael, but before they get to that extreme. I think there are things that we can recognize easily. We can recognize when there's a bully and no one says anything. I think that's something that will resonate with audiences.
So I guess it can make you uncomfortable and it can make you think. This case happened 20 years ago. Where are we now? It's a good mirror to look at ourselves and say, “Well, obviously we're more empathetic with victims, but how much have we changed? How much have these behaviors changed already?” So I think it's a dialogue with the public.
What are you working on now?
I hope to work with my partner, Paul Laverty, the screenwriter [The Old Oak] and a long-time collaborator of Ken Loach. He wrote a story to be shot in Scotland. It's about serious things but in a lighter tone, something he really has a handle on. It's a kind of comedy, but drama. It's fiction that's not based on a true story or a real character. It's called What's wrong with Charlie? But we haven't received the green light yet, so it's too early to talk about it further.