Interview – La Terra Negra (Alberto Morais, 2025)

In The black terraMaría (Laia Marull) returns to the hard rural world to work with her brother Angel (Andrés Gertrudix) in the industrial mill that abandoned years ago. Disinherited and methodical, faces his exclusion while Angel hires Miquel (Sergi López), a man marked by his past in prison, whose mystical presence arouses admiration and fear in the community. We talked to its director, Alberto Morais, in the presentation of the film during the Malaga Festival.

How has it been to work with two greats from Spanish cinema such as Sergi López and Laia Marull?

It is a gift, because everyone agrees that they are the best of the best. I use an interpretive and narrative mode that sometimes moves away from the convention, but when you work with Laia Marul or Sergi López you just have to shut up and wait for the direction assistant to say Corten. And move on to the next shot. They are too good. It is so. In fact, I have asked you things, sometimes I have constrained you in the interpretive issue. I have locked them a little, but then you go to the assembly room and see that since they ignore you, they suddenly give you things that are wonderful and say, fuck. How lucky I have had!

The black terra He speaks of the rural world, a very hard world, also presented with little romanticism, something unusual in contemporary Spanish cinema, where the countryside is presented as something idyllic.

Roberto Rossellini, the father of Neorealism, said: “I don't know what Neorealism is, but, if you had to describe it, it has to do with love to neighbor.” This was said in 1945, after World War II, when so much humanism was needed. This is a story in which two people are in an industrial mill, in a field, two discharged people, two disinherited people, two people who feel they have failed, when it has been the society in which they live the one that has failed them. As has happened to many people from my generation. This is a story that is based on real people, in fact, there could be since it is based on real events. Miquel is based on a friend of mine who has lived in the street in Asturias and who worked in an industrial mill where they paid him with alcohol to have him there. And my friend Carmen, who has had to fight a lot, has been very alone to have a job, having studied. We are talking about fifty -year -old people, who are being away from cities.

The relationship of the characters of Sergi López and Laia Marul is not a love story, it is a relationship of admiration, a specular relationship of someone who looks at each other.

Yes, they see the pain and then lick the wounds mutually. They take care of themselves, there is respect, there is something almost mystical, but because the film is mystical order, although I consider myself atheist. I appropriated elements of the Christian religion to make a movie, of a sacred nature. It is something that the great directors that I admire like Pasolini or Bresson have done. I like the idea of ​​dignifying the disinherited with elements that are never used for characters like these, such as classical music, in this case Bach. Miquel is a person who has passed through jail, suddenly something changed in him, has become something else and has the ability to influence others. There is a fundamental element in the story that has a Requiem structure in a way, that's why the film begins with Dies Irae, which is one of the initial parts of the Requiem. And as in everything Requiem, because someone has to sacrifice themselves so that others can be released.

Besides, The black terra It reflects a very masculine world where the female character, that of Laia Marull, has to fight with all its surroundings. There are moments, even that they say: “We don't love you here, we don't want a woman to send about us.”

These phrases reflect a feeling that have much of the Spaniards who believe that Spain is theirs. A feeling of ownership of the country, when Spain belongs to everyone. These male characters embody that patrimonial feeling. The character of Laia is a strong woman who also goes through very hard situations and yet, she does not regret, quite the opposite, she takes control.

The black terra (Alberto Morais, 2025)

Cinema premiere August 29