Daniel Monzón Honored at Canary Islands Fantastic Film Festival

Daniel Monzón's passion for movies started when he was just seven. His grandmother took him to see King Kong (1933), and watching the giant ape on the big screen in a dark cinema sparked a lifelong love for filmmaking.

Now, this film journalist, screenwriter, and director is being honored at the IX Canary Islands Fantastic Film Festival Ciudad de La Laguna Isla Calavera, which runs until November 16th. The festival is celebrating his work with an honorary prize. Monzón, known for films like Cell 211 (2009), El Niño (2014), Yucatán (2018), The Laws of the Border (2021), and the upcoming Pray for Us, spoke with DIARIO DE AVISOS.

You're here to receive an award and meet the audience. Having started as a film critic, you've been to many festivals. How does it feel to be on the receiving end?

"It's very rewarding. I make films to connect with people, to communicate. Sometimes, the audience completes the film for you; they find things in it that resonate with their own feelings and experiences, things you might not have even realized were there. That's why I make films: to move people, to share something. Festivals, especially screenings followed by Q&As where people share how a film affected them, remind me of the core reason I do this. Isla Calavera is wonderful. It's growing and becoming more established, but it still allows for a very direct connection with people. It feels intimate, unlike a huge event like Venice, where I went with Cell 211. There, you get applause and interesting feedback, but here, it's much more personal."

"I make films to connect with people, and sometimes the audience completes them."

You've worked in print, radio, and television journalism, and as a screenwriter. Was becoming a director the natural next step, or was that always the goal?

"When I was a child, my grandmother took me to see King Kong, and it completely captivated me. I went into that theater as one person and came out as another. I've never really left that 'island' of King Kong, Isla Calavera, which is why this award means so much to me. That film changed me. From age seven, I knew I wanted to be a director. But back then, getting access to cameras wasn't easy. We had Super 8, but no phones or digital cameras. Then VHS came along. So, I started writing about movies. I was contacted by Fotogramas magazine and later by Televisión Española, where I spent a long time working on the show Días de Cine. This gave me the chance to meet and talk with directors I admired, like William Friedkin, John Carpenter, Robert Zemeckis, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, and Carlos Saura. I was interviewing people I looked up to."

And they were doing exactly what you dreamed of doing.

"Yes. More than just a journalist, I was asking them questions as someone who aspired to make films myself. Those were intense conversations where they shared their craft with me. Imagine the teachers I had! My ultimate goal was always to direct. Eventually, I reached a point where I stepped away from journalism and decided it was time to try directing."

That led to your first film, The Warrior's Heart (1999).

"I was almost 30, around 28, when it came out. The film was a love letter to cinema. It was a genre film, which would fit perfectly at Isla Calavera, but also a passionate mix of genres. I wanted to use every tool available. I figured if I only got to make one feature film, I wanted to go all out. The Warrior's Heart has elements of thriller, adventure, fantasy, and intimate drama. It used special effects and extras. It was a wild first film. I remember showing the script to Álex de la Iglesia, who had already made The Day of the Beast. He told me, 'Very good, Daniel, it's really good. And if you're going to take a fall, make it a big one!' [laughs]. So, the urge to make films was always there, and my experience as a film journalist – in interviews, on set, meeting directors and actors – was my film school. I was seeing the inner workings of the profession I wanted to join."

"My first film was a mix of genres; if they didn't let me make another one, at least I'd have used all the tools."

Which part of filmmaking demands more from you, and which do you enjoy more: writing a script or shooting it?

"I enjoy all the stages of making a film. The hardest part is when you don't have a clear idea yet. I need to be passionate about an idea, to fall in love with the seed of a story. It's almost like an illness, a virus that takes over, and you have to make the film to get cured. When I don't have an idea, or can't commit to one, I feel restless. But once I'm clear on what I want to do and I commit, I enjoy everything: the writing, the preparation, casting actors, rehearsing, shooting, editing, sound mixing, working with the composer... It's all a great pleasure, though it also comes with a certain anxiety because you're always trying to achieve the best within limited time and resources. The only part I truly dislike is the financing. Going from office to office trying to convince people that your idea is brilliant and worth investing in. That's the most tedious and uncomfortable part of filmmaking. Unlike writing a book, which you can do alone with a computer, cinema requires a lot of money and many people, and securing funding is a necessary hurdle."

Is there usually a big difference between your initial ideas for a project and the final film?

"The final result often becomes something different from the original idea, but it happens gradually. The initial idea might come as a sudden revelation, and then you develop it, refine it, or realize it's leading you in a new direction. In none of the films I've made have I felt I've perfectly captured exactly what was in my head. But I'm very proud of all of them. Each is unique, and like children, I love them all equally. I don't blame any of them for not turning out exactly as I imagined."

And I suppose each film reflects your obsessions as a filmmaker and shows what interests you at different times.

"They've all been with me. From the moment I conceive an idea to its premiere, it's a long journey. Making a film is like creating a universe that you offer to the viewer. They might choose to enter it or not, but you've lived in that universe for years. You've nurtured it, thought about every detail: the colors, the rooms, the faces of the characters, the music, the sounds of their footsteps... You live it so intensely, savor it so much, it becomes so much a part of you that you can't see it as something separate."

"The only part of filmmaking I detest is having to convince everyone that my project is worth investing in."

This year you filmed Ruega por nosotras, about the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer (Patronage for the Protection of Women), a grim institution in Spain that operated until 1985, supposedly to protect young women's morals but in reality restricting their freedom. What inspired this film?

"I started by browsing the internet, gathering material for an idea that was completely different from what the film became. An article led me to the Patronage for the Protection of Women. As soon as I began researching, I thought, 'What is this?' because people today in Spain are largely unaware this happened. It was a terrible institution whose history was silenced for decades. We're talking about women whose childhoods and youth were stolen, who were left broken forever. Thousands upon thousands of women, during Franco's regime and even after, as it continued until 1985 out of sheer inertia. That was the catalyst. I have a daughter who just turned 19, and I wouldn't want anything like that to happen to her. If stories aren't told, it's as if they never happened, and this atrocity occurred in our country not too long ago. I didn't want to make a political tract, so I decided the best way to tell this story was through the life of a girl who, due to unjust circumstances like so many others, has to endure that ordeal. It's the story of Ana, whose devout Catholic parents consider her to be straying and send her to this institution. A film shouldn't be a political or social pamphlet; it should tell stories of human feelings. That's how you draw viewers in and tell them a story worth hearing. My co-writer Jorge Guerricaechevarría and I, who has co-written almost all my films, based our work on the testimonies of women who went through that patronage and remained silent for years because they felt ashamed. It's devastating: they ruin your life, and you feel guilty because that's what they instilled in you. Ruega por nosotras tells the story of a well-behaved girl who enters the institution and meets another girl from a very different social background. They form a friendship that helps her survive and confront the mother superior, as these reformatories were run by religious orders. The mother superior becomes fixated on her because she's different, harder to control. It's a very cruel story, a rather suffocating drama."

How important is research in this and your other films? How long does it typically take?

"It takes months, sometimes many. For example, with El Niño, Jorge Guerricaechevarría, my great partner in crime, and I spent nearly eight months researching in the Strait of Gibraltar area. We spoke with the Civil Guard, police, customs officials... but also with criminals. We went down to Morocco, visited marijuana fields... We immersed ourselves in the area and what was happening there. We wanted to create a broad picture of the Strait of Gibraltar and its people, including drug trafficking... Everything in the film comes from reality. For Cell 211, we went into prisons, spoke with inmates, and even with a murderer who served as inspiration for the character Malamadre, whom Luis Tosar later met. We also spoke with prison officials. Even for a wild comedy like Yucatán, we talked to people who work on cruise ships, immersing ourselves in how those ships operate, that Fellini-esque, absurd world... Research is crucial so that when you're directing, you feel you're on solid ground. Knowing the reality doesn't mean you have to portray it exactly; you have to engage in dramatic storytelling to make it interesting and engaging for the viewer. But it's incredibly useful to know where you're deviating, because those deviations are deliberate choices for dramatic effect. Furthermore, reality is a constant source of inspiration. Making a film is an adventure, and the storyteller has to be the first one to live it."