Cesc Gay

Born in 1967, Cesc Gay from Barcelona studied film at EMAV, the Municipal School of Audiovisuals, in Barcelona. He soon came to the conclusion that in Spain he would have few opportunities to shoot, so he decided to go abroad. He ended up in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York, where for lack of anything else he went to work as a carpenter, renovating a building.

During working hours he found a soul mate, the Argentine Daniel Gimelberg , who shared his passion for dedicating himself to celluloid one day. During breaks and after the workday they talked about their dreams and ended up weaving the script for a movie. They didn’t need a lot of money to shoot it, a million of the old pesetas was enough for them, but they didn’t have that amount. They conditioned the shooting to ever achieve the dream figure.

By a stroke of luck, the Argentine was unexpectedly charged for insurance that he thought would never reach him, due to the accidental death of his father years ago. Both began to shoot Hotel Room in black and white and in English. They used Gimelberg’s apartment in Harlem as a set, which served as room 426 of a hotel. The film, based on chance, recounts the vicissitudes of various characters who coincide in passing through the room.

Hotel Room pointed ways, but did not have a great distribution. Luckily, Cesc Gay was offered to direct the production of Krámpack , a play by Jordi Sánchez , about the discovery of homosexuality. Finally, they also commissioned him to shoot the film version, with Fernando Ramallo and Jordi Vilches . With moments of height and some interest, the film was far from being round.

Growing up suited the filmmaker very well. He paints a convincing generational portrait in the choral drama En la ciudad , about a group of young friends from Barcelona, ​​very representative of today’s society, with communication problems. They were played by very brilliant actors, such as Álex Brendemühl , Mónica López , María Pujalte , Leonor Watling , Vicenta N’Dongo , and Eduard Fernández , who was awarded the Goya for best supporting actor.

Cesc Gay outdid himself in Fiction , which precisely brought Fernández back, but this time as the main actor. This time the plot takes place in the countryside, as it follows the journey of a film director in an existential crisis who retires to the rural house of his friend Santi ( Javier Cámara ), where he begins an approach with a local girl. . It is a leisurely film, full of suggestions and metaphors, but shot with simplicity and restraint.

This is the author’s most heartfelt work, since the character of the director who rethinks his life has a lot in common with him. In addition, his wife is played by Gay’s wife, Àgata Roca , actress and niece of the politicians Miguel Roca and Pasqual Maragall. The Gay-Roca couple have two children.

It didn’t reach the same height with VOS , which also depicts disoriented thirty-somethings, but with a lighter tone. The film is narrated through Ander, one of the characters, who is writing the story for the cinema. Gay gets a slice of the resource, although he ends up running out.

A pistol in each hand brings together recognized actors in pairs, since it is a succession of encounters between two characters. One of his fetish actors stands out, Javier Cámara , ideal as a desperate ex-husband, together with the little-known Clara Segura , and the interpretive duels between his other favorite actor, Eduard Fernández , with Leonardo Sbaraglia , and the masterful Luis Tosar and Ricardo Darín . The different dialogues revolve around the typical themes of the director’s cinema, current disorientation, infidelity, family breakdown and loneliness, and he dissects above all the masculine difficulty in expressing his feelings.