Genius of animation Bill Plympton has produced so many gags that we could do a very best selection in GIF format. Gerard Casau volunteers as selector.
A gypsy village; immigrants camping with their caravans and tents on the outskirts of any European city; the smell of sweat, dust and animals. A car arrives. A stranger gets out of the car. He is searching for a miracle. He is looking for Yanindara…
Assuming that this story would only make sense should we be able to gather a casting of protagonists and extras who were real Romanian gypsies, we started our search. We had to find two Romanian gypsy teenagers, a thirteen and a fifteen-year-old. The first step was gaining access to the Romanian gypsy core in Barcelona and its surrounding areas. Thanks to the help of several public organisations and to the hard work of Jordi Herreros, Production Director, we found the basement in which thirty people lived in barely sixty square metres, huddled together in very harsh conditions.
She was there, in a corner, silent, waiting for her turn. I thought she had something special. It was just a hunch. Just like that, like love at first sight. A few weeks went by and we returned to that basement asking for that girl. She was fifteen and lived with her husband‘s family. They had been married three years.
Little by little the Romanian gypsy community started to trust us and stopped seeing us as a bunch of aliens suggesting they abandoned begging and stealing for some days to act in a film. We took some girls and boys to the localisation we had chosen and “set up” the gypsy camp that would be the film’s main set. There I did a little test to see how they would react when being shot. As it always happens, seeing those tests on the big screen once they had been developed at the lab was revealing and I confirmed the enormous natural force of Camelia and Bulgar. My intuition had been right this time. That girl had magic in her eyes. They would be Yanindara and Adonay.
We managed to get a place to rehearse that was close to their homes, and each afternoon I would meet them to tell them the story and do a simple performance, as well as other basic interpretation exercises for them to be conscious of themselves and of the characters they had to play. I keep fond memories from those days and I think that’s the base of the film. After that, during the shooting, there isn’t much time to try things out or opening new paths. So all the things you’ve been able to get from your actors in the previous rehearsals (most of all in this case, because they’re no actors) will be decisive to get the long-awaited authenticity. I still remember the days in which we started rehearsing late because the police had arrested some of the kids in the morning and I had to go to the police station to wait for them to get out and take them directly to rehearsal. In such a situation you think, more than ever, about the point of making movies and about the really important things in life.
Making a film is always an adventure. Everyone who’s ever joined or has simply been present in any of the multiple processes that are part of film art know this. Taking this axiom as a starting point, Yanindara could prove no different.
Director: Lluís Quílez
Script: Lluís Quílez, Pau Obiol
Executive Producers: Isaac Torras, M.A. Faura
Line Producer: Jordi Herreros
Director of Photography: Isaac Vila
Art Director: Iñigo Navarro
Costume Design: Patricia Plaja
Sound: Dani Fontrodona, Oriol Tarragó, Marc Orts
Editing: Jorge Macaya
Music: David Crespo
The trailer
Awards: 36 International Awards including Mecal, Aguilar de Campoo, Palencia, Naoussa, Escorial, Medina.