As spring returns, so does the Catalan Film Festival, now in its eleventh edition, with screenings taking place across Scotland throughout March and April, including at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh. This year’s programme ranges from established figures of Catalan cinema, such as Albert Serra, whose Afternoons of Solitude (2024) topped Cahiers du Cinéma’s year end list, to new filmmakers making their debut, including Jaume Claret Muxart with the queer coming of age story Strange River (2025), which premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival last year. We spoke with Claret about his cinematic influences, his debut feature, and his approach to cinema.
What were your cinematic inspirations for this film? Since part of the film is set in Germany, I feel there is a sense of the Berlin School in the later half.
There were a lot. Because it is such a big question. For me, people from the Berlin School are really important. Angela Schanelec and Christian Petzold, for example, are very important in that approach. I am interested in how they use ellipses, how you go from one place to another through what is not connected, through the ellipses. That is something I love. From Petzold, it is also more in Undine. In the same way, mythology is really important, the water, the mermaid. That was really inspiring for the character of Alexander [played by Francesco Wenz]. And then there is a lot of Romanticism, the painters. Then maybe Impressionism too, although that was a later reference. And then there is also a lot from the cinema of the new realism in France.
Since you mentioned transitions between spaces, how did you find your locations?
We went there maybe seven times, just going, travelling, riding the bikes, stopping. Then I wrote a lot of scenes from the locations. Normally, sometimes it is the opposite. You have the scenes first, and then you find the locations. But in this case, it was totally the opposite. First I found the locations, and then I found the scenes.
You also made a short film that concerns the same river. What does that river mean to you personally and artistically, and what is the connection between the two projects?
In the short film, it was because I was preparing this feature film. I wanted to make a short film about the river, but in Winter. My connection to the river is because I went to that river when I was 11, and I remember that landscape a lot.
That brings me to another point. This film feels very much about memory, but only later do we see the use of smartphones. At the beginning, they are using a map. Was that a conscious decision? Why did you do that?
Yes, because I believe cinema is an art of temporal time, so I do not want to point to a specific time too directly. Finally, I use the phone when it is necessary, for example when it has a dramatic function. But I am more interested in this feeling of not knowing the exact time or moment of the film. I think cinema has its own kind of time.
Going back to your shorts, Our Room (La nostra habitació, 2025) was also shown here at the Catalan Film Festival, and it also has this mother and son relationship. Does that particular relationship fascinate you?
Yes, it is true that this is something I maybe return to because it is an easy way for me to talk about something, because I have been a son, so I can talk about this relationship.
I think it is interesting. I also love this physical relation between a child and a mother. There is a combining of different bodies. It is more physical, maybe not so much emotional, but I like it visually. First of all, I love Daguerréotypes [1975] by Agnès Varda, a documentary, and I love how that film portrays this relation, this triangle or this line between a mother and a child, with a child who is always shorter than her. It is sort of stranger with the youngest, but then also with others. I love the relation of that model, how the emotions of one can affect the emotions of the other.
I also love the way you shoot them. I think the first meaningful conversation between the mother and son is when he is helping her practise for the play. You often shoot faces from the side, or sometimes from behind, with different lighting. How do you choose how to shoot faces? Do you construct that before casting, or do you choose the angle after finding the actor?
The final shot really appears in the shooting. It depends on the body in the landscape. But before that there is a lot of work with the [director of photography] and with different people we worked with for six months, or even one year, every day. There are references that I put together, and a document, a technical script, something tangible. But when we are shooting, we lose all that, we forget it, and then we start again, the thinking of this thing. Of course, there is work before, but then it changes in the moment of shooting.
Before this Berlin School section, there is this unusual encounter with another actress, a German-French actress, and it reminded me a little of Hong Sang-soo. What was your inspiration there, and how did you think about inserting that as the beginning of something unusual?
For that scene, there was not really any reference. It came in the shooting in an organic way. It began almost as something we had to apply in a planned way, but then it started to become organic. When the material arrived from the laboratory, I saw that scene and it reminded me of something close to that feeling, maybe closer to Hong Sang-soo. It could be a scene from a Hong Sang-soo or Éric Rohmer film.
That leads to another question about the complexity of language in your film. The journey moves across languages. What does that boundary space mean to you, especially in relation to language?
Yes, that is true, and it is something that is always in my films. Now it is German, which I do not speak and do not understand, and then there is French, which I understand. I love that because we live in a world that is really complex. We speak different languages, so I think cinema has to portray that in some way. I love to work with someone I cannot understand at all, or only understand a little, because then I can focus on other things, gestures, tactics. Of course, there is a screenplay, but there is also a lot of improvisation, so there is freedom.
I am also interested in music in your film. Your short film also has a musical element. How do you use music, especially in the German section, when they meet the ghostly figure of Alexander? It begins as something within the scene, then becomes something that connects different scenes and characters.
I think the most enjoyable process for me in writing is to listen to music and find scenes through the music. But normally, the songs that are in the script are not the same songs that are in the final edit, because sometimes I get bored, or we do not find the money, so other music appears during shooting or editing. In this case, some of the music was already there. Of course, one piece appears in Undine by Christian Petzold. But before that, there is an improvisation by the actor, who is a musician. Then after that there is Ravel, and other contemporary music that I admire.
This is your first feature, and it went to Venice. What advice would you give to young filmmakers trying to make their first film?
To be close to friends. To work with the same team, to have confidence in them, to have a relationship with them, and to take from them not talent, because I do not like the word talent, but their work, their capacity, their effort. To listen to them and incorporate that into the film. And also to be really open to what can happen in the moment of shooting, because sometimes it is unpredictable, and normally it is better than what you imagined.
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