Álex de la Iglesia walks relaxed near the soda fountain that is located in front of the Guillermo del Toro room in the Cineteca of the capital of Jalisco. He smilingly orders an order of popcorn and does not hesitate to add a little chili on top, as he is accustomed to in these parts. It’s in its ecosystem, a film festival. He wears a black t-shirt Donnie Darko —Richard Kelly’s cult film—, like a film geek he admits to being. He defends that films are “to enjoy” and thus he has tried, throughout his career as a filmmaker, to ensure that his leitmotif is captured in his work. And like the idea that he has of what the work of a filmmaker should be like, he has also been enjoying his stay in Mexico at the Guadalajara Film Festival, where he was awarded the Mayahuel International Tribute.
During his time, the 58-year-old director, born in Bilbao, one of the leaders of horror and fantasy cinema in Spain, with works such as The Day of the Beast (1995) or The witches of Zugarramurdi (2013), has talked about the cinema he likes to make and its current state. He considers that he belongs to a privileged generation, who lived in a time when approaching professional cinema was easier than now. “I have been very lucky and that has made it easier for me to make films that were not easy to produce. I will tell you that there is much more talent now. “We are experiencing a great moment for Latin American cinema,” he says.
The director is currently battling on two fronts and on one he has dreamed of. The first, being able to finish the third season of his most recent series, 30 coins, created for HBO Max, but which was not renewed in its reorganization into Max. The series tells how Judas betrayed Jesus Christ for 30 coins. 2,000 years later, one of them appears in a remote town in Spain, unleashing a series of supernatural forces that threaten to uncover secrets of the Vatican and annihilate the human race, according to the synopsis.
“Originally, it was intended as a trilogy and I’m going to put my life into it to finish it. It is written, I do not want to feed hopes that I cannot fulfill. If I couldn’t find an interested platform or channel, I would try to do it on my own,” she stated. The second project she has in the pipeline is 1992a miniseries produced by Netflix, starring Paz Vega, among others, which will revolve around some mysterious murders in which the same pattern is always repeated: all the victims have been burned and a Curro doll appears next to the bodies, the iconic mascot of the 1992 Expo in Seville.
However, one of his dream projects, which could not materialize a few years ago, is the script he wrote about El Santo, the symbol fighter of Mexico. During a masterclass Made within the framework of the festival, De la Iglesia announced that the film was already financed, but that they could not reach an agreement with the family.
“They are charming, El Santo’s son is wonderful, his grandson too. “We get along fantastically, but we couldn’t find an agreement,” he said. Another factor was that the American financiers had suggested an actor who at that time was not on the Spanish director’s radar, none other than Ryan Gosling, popularly known for playing Ken in the most recent film of Barbieby Greta Gerwig.
“They told me ‘do you know Ryan Gosling’, I said ‘no’, they told me he had to be The Saint. They showed me photos and I didn’t see it as such,” he revealed to the audience, which sparked laughter from those present.
As a result of that conversation, De la Iglesia seems to have reactivated interest in that project that was left in the pipeline. “Notice that because I said it in the talk I have spoken to people. I maintain the daily hope and hope of making my film about El Santo materialize,” he says. When asked who could be the wearer of the silver mask, he does not hesitate: “I don’t know. I see an older actor who looks like the father of El Hijo del Santo. I really liked the physical appearance of El Santo. I don’t know what it is, but in the film that I wrote he never took off the mask because he couldn’t, since it was a sacred mask,” he explains.
Terror, from niche genre to transgressive cinema
Since his debut with his debut feature in 1993, Mutant action -a comedy with a cyberpunk aesthetic between large corporations, mutants and space colonies-, De la Iglesia’s style has combined horror and the fantastic with doses of humor and social criticism, borders that were much more marked before, but that over time have been elucidated, which has resulted in transgressive products that are of the niche genre.
“What I am seeing is that the most avant-garde, cinema we could really call modern, which is opening up new ways of telling, is genre. It is the cinema of Ari Aster or that of Panos Cosmatos, for example, they are an event. The cinema of the avant-garde of generic horror is now very transgressive and very interesting,” she adds.
In specialized circles, people have begun to talk about the genre as “high horror” or “author horror.” This is due to the emergence of new voices that have revitalized horror, such as Aster himself and other directors who have made people talk in recent years, such as Robert Eggers with his supernatural horror in The Witchor Jordan Peele with the mix of science fiction and horror in Nope!, to name a few. But what does the Bilbao director think about these names?
“I understand that it is surprising, but those of us who go to Sitges every year [festival de cine catalán de cine fantástico y de terror] We watch movies like that. Maybe suddenly we have been lucky enough to have a good result with films like Hereditary [de Ari Aster] that have transcended gender. The same thing happens at other festivals here in Mexico such as Mórbido or Feratum, where there are different films that may not reach international distribution, but those of us who enjoy the genre do know them,” he adds.
The “unique” cinema of Guillermo del Toro
The Church is not shy about professing its love for Mexico. Especially to his cinema and his filmmakers. He admits that one of his favorite films in the country is The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales, just as he declares himself a fan of all of El Santo’s films and the fantastic cinema of this region, he also opts for the cinema of his countryman and reference of the movement surrealist, Luis Buñuel, made during the time he remained in the Republic due to his political convictions and the difficulties imposed by Franco’s censorship in his country. “All of Buñuel’s, the best, are Mexican. That’s what I’m telling you, I infinitely prefer the Mexican stage more than the French stage,” adds the director of sad trumpet ballad.
Another wish that he keeps on his Mexican wish list is to be able to work with Guillermo del Toro, who throughout his career has managed to remain faithful to the fantasy genre and his different monsters that have starred in his films.
“His passion for the fantastic, for monsters, for the dark side of life, for death, for so many other things and turning it into something poetic or something dreamy is typically Mexican. His way of making films is tremendously Mexican and now we have the opportunity to enjoy it all over the world. He is one of the most talented people precisely for making unique cinema and having managed to make it international,” he says about the director from Guadalajara.
“Curiously, being here in Guadalajara when you talk to me about it, I suddenly say to myself, but if the ones I like the most are the best directors, Cuarón and González Iñárritu, the best people in this profession of filmmaker, the best are Mexican,” concludes De church.
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