Cetacean Sounds

it doesn’t take many scenes to realize that Una ballena, by Pablo Hernando, is one of the most special films Spanish cinema has produced in recent years.

In fact, it’s in the transition from one scene to another that the director from Vitoria reminds us that an edit in the cutting room is a leap... into the unknown. A shot might lead to a functional reverse shot, but what if instead it took us to a different space?

What if entering a room no one else can enter only required this?

What if a hired killer had precisely this power?

The best part is that behind these two premises lies so much more. There’s one of the most haunting performances by Ingrid García-Jonsson, there’s the creation of one of the year’s most fascinating characters (the colossal Ramón Barea channeling an impossible, Basque-style mix of Hemingway’s Santiago, Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver), there’s a display of visual effects that seem otherworldly, and a plot that hooks you with a mystery that’s clearly there... that we think we can grasp... but that, as it should be, slips away.

It’s “the other Spanish cinema” writing “OTHER” in such massive capital letters that we can barely see where one ends and the next begins.

Whether you’re just discovering it or want to go deeper, you can revisit the Press Conference held during the last 57th edition, where Pablo Hernando, actors Ramon Barea and Ingrid García-Jonsson, and producers Leire Apellaniz and Carmen Lacasa revealed some of the keys to a project that, even months later, still has us captivated.

Listen to the full Press Conference on our Spotify channel