Jaime Rosales

Jaime Rosales was born in Barcelona on January 2, 1970. With his beard and formal appearance, and the serious explanations he gives in interviews in his films, one would say that he has a degree in philosophy or something like that, but the truth is that his degree university has it in business sciences at ESADE. Although he does not lack specific training in the techniques and aesthetics of the Seventh Art, since from 1996 he spent three years in Cuba enjoying a scholarship to study at the San Antonio de Baños International Film and Television School, plus another season in 1999 at the Australian Film Television and Radio School Broadcasting Entertainment in Sydney, Australia.

Upon his return from these stays abroad, Rosales began working as a screenwriter for film and television, but it became increasingly clear to him that he had his own inner world, and a vision of the things he wanted to express in the form of films to share with the viewer. So in 2000 he founded the production company Fresdeval Films with José María de Orbe , with which he will carry out his projects and those of others that he thinks are worth supporting; They themselves highlight of the company “a definite vocation towards projects of high artistic quality based on an original perspective on issues of social, human and cultural interest”.

His first feature film, Las horas del día (2003) did not go unnoticed and was selected for the prestigious Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. The protagonist, Abel, a weak-looking guy who takes care of his bedridden mother, hides the sad sick soul of a murderer, with no apparent reason to kill, except the inner boredom that the social environment in which he develops fosters.

Four years will pass until Rosales delivers his next film, Las horas del día , but without a doubt it gives the bell by winning the Goya for best film against the odds, unseating El orfanato , the favorite for that award. She again repeats her calm and introspective style, which takes her time in describing people, which she shows in a way that portrays them very well, acting. Like a Robert Bresson or a Yasujiro Ozu, filmmakers that he declares to admire, perfectly manages the narrative tempo, the silences and the off-screen, and even uses the screen division with originality, all to narrate the adventures of a series of current and milling urban characters, immersed in the problems of everyday life; Death reaches some, regardless of age, that’s life, and Rosales narrates it without fuss, with a look that shows he knows what is in the human heart. “In general, I think we have good intentions for each other, although we are not always able to show what we really think and feel,” the director will declare on the subject.

That Rosales feels responsible for his cinema, and wants to say something to the viewer, can be easily deduced from the words he spoke when he picked up the Goya. He, a family man, married and with two daughters aged 4 and 7, dedicated the award to “those children, future film buffs, who are the future of cinema”, a declaration of intent about the desirable educational side of films.

The good reception of his film, within some keys that demand an intelligent public and willing to make an effort to enjoy his stories, pushes Rosales to embark on an ambitious and radical film, perhaps too much, especially because of the subject -the terrorism of ETA– and the almost “performance” approach, pure and simple experimental cinema. headshotHe follows as if from afar, with telephoto cameras, the daily experiences of various people. Without a narrative thread, we recognize their daily routine, and this is supposed to bring us to a state of shock when finally these guys turn out to be terrorists who kill some civil guards without hesitation, whom they run into by chance. Rosales explained that “you have to have faith in the human being; we must look for new ideas that allow us to move forward. Sometimes it takes being naive to work things out. You have to flee from cynicism that sees everything as impossible. I am also not a fan of simplifying things.” Undoubtedly, the noble intention of the director is to underline the irrational and inhuman nature of the murder, but the way to do it did not reach the viewer, it was hermetic at the beginning, and too elemental at the end.

Honesty is a trait that defines Rosales as a person and as a filmmaker. A good sample was an article in the newspaper “El País”, where he had no qualms about acknowledging something obvious, but which many of his colleagues deny: in Spain “Spanish cinema does not enjoy a good press” and the reason he gave was elementary, “because an important part of the group that represents him has been politically significant in excess.”