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The Peruvian director Rossana Diaz Costa was visiting Arequipa to present his film “A world for Julius” at the Threshold Cinema. In the following interview with the filmmaker, we talk about her experience carrying the classic novel by Alfredo Bryce Echenique to whom.
According to the film’s description, it “tells the moving story of Julius, an upper class boy in the 50s in Lima. He lives in a splendid mansion, with his aristocratic family and extensive servants. As the years go by, he loses his innocence little by little, discovering and not understanding an adult world full of inequalities and injustices”.
The cast is made up Mayella Lloclla, Fiorella de Ferrari, Nacho Fresneda, Pamela Sack, rodrigo beard (Julius 4 years old) and Augusto Linares (Julius, 9 years old). Beside Gonzalo Torres, Camila McLennan, Fernando Bacilio, Antonieta Pari, Salvador del Solaramong others.
Your window to understand Peru
A world for Julius (1970) is one of the most representative and beloved novels of contemporary Peru. Since its publication, the rights were bought five times, however, no one had managed to take it to the big screen. Even Rossana Diaz.
This was the first adult novel that he read and that explained many things that he did not understand about our country. Díaz was moved by Julius’s story and with each rereading she understood the novel and its social background better. she helped him “open a window to understand our country”.
This novel has been my favorite Peruvian novel since I was a girl. I read it for the first time when I was around 12 or 13 years old, it is a novel that has accompanied me throughout my adolescence and youth.
His first attempt to adapt the novel was made in a script course in Madrid. Even though it was just an exercise for his class, he didn’t think twice and jumped into the pool. “It was like a first process of selection and condensation of what could have been the script in the future. He was stuck there in a drawer as a student exercise”.
In 2015, after finishing his first film Trip to Timbuktu, a Peruvian-Argentine co-production premiered at the Lima Film Festival, decided to return to Julius. After returning from Spain, she had been teaching classes in Peru for several years and realized that the new generations did not know the novel. They knew Bryce, but they didn’t know what he was really about.
It was like realizing again that, once again, Peru did not really solve their problems. We had a very sick root problem, all the faces we have as a society are in that novel. I said, suddenly it’s time to do an adaptation of this type.
It was the perfect opportunity to unite his two passions: literature and cinema. Six years later, the film reached theaters in our country.
The challenges and expectations
Diaz comments that there were many challenges in doing this project. First of all, write the script and then get the financing. The film ended up being a co-production of Tombuktu Films (Peru), Visiona TV (Spain), Televisión Española and Machaco Films (Argentina).
Writing the script is a complicated task, one thing is the first adaptation exercise and another thing is to write and arrive at the latest version to shoot. A very nice but difficult job, which took a lot of time. The hardest part was getting the money, that was the biggest challenge of this project. It has not been easy to get financing.
However, during the process she also had the support of Bryce, who put his trust in her from the first moment. He was very happy with the movie and even watched it several times. The filmmaker comments that for the writer it was also a “relief” to see it finally made.
He is very aware of the transformation processes that are adaptations. At no time did he tell me why there is no such thing and why there is no such thing. Never. Because he has always respected my vision as a filmmaker.
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julius around the world
After its premiere in October last year, the film gathered more than 40,000 spectators in Peruvian movie theaters. It was part of the official selection of festivals in the United States, such as the San Diego International Film Festival, St. Louis International Film Festival, Austin Film Festival y New York Independent Cinema Awards.
The film also had its way through theaters abroad. It was on the billboard for six weeks in different cities of France, as well as in Germany and England. It was also nominated for Best Television Film at the GAUDI Awards (Spain).
For Díaz, all these experiences were completely enriching. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in Paris, London or Arequipa. All audiences have something to give you, all audiences are enriching”.
In the United States, he even had the opportunity to present the film at several universities, where he was able to talk about themes from the novel such as racism, discrimination, and inequality. It was a nice experience to see how in each place “they took Julius themes to their own societies.”
What made me see these trips is that Julius’s story is universal and completely current. It is a story of a boy from the fifties in Peru, but people read it as something completely from the present. In many countries, not only in Latin America.
The importance of film clubs in Peru
During her time at Umbral, the filmmaker lamented that the film club culture is being lost in our country. So she thinks it’s fantastic that there are spaces of this type where Peruvian films and other classic films are re-released.
The possibility of seeing films from other places, different films, films from your own country, and then also being able to talk with the people who have made the film is something wonderful..
He stressed that it is also a difficult task to get people to go and pay a ticket. “People expect these spaces to be free and it shouldn’t be. They have to get used to paying for the American film, and also for the Peruvian one”.
Here the full interview:
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