The short film ‘Je te tiens’, directed by Sergio Caballero, co-founder of Sónar, and starring internationally reknown Spanish actress Ángela Molina and newcomer Virginia Rousse, will premiere worldwide at the 72 Cannes Film Festival. The film has been selected and will be presented at the ’51st Directors’ Fortnight’, taking place from the 15 to the 25 May.

‘Je te tiens’ is Sergio Caballero’s first incursion into drama and shows the road trip by a mother and daughter across unusual worlds. The film narrates how the mother (played by the international reknown Spanish actress Angela Molina) tries to convince her daughter (Virginia Rousse, a member of the Sónar booking team) not to commit suicide.

The director, Sergio Caballero, on the shoot:

“It’s the first time I’ve worked with a professional actress. It had to be someone who felt comfortable with my working method, where there is no script and where the world in which the story takes place is strange and unconventional. Angela understood perfectly this energy and that intuition was the engine that powers the film. She said yes right away and I think it has been fantastic to work with an actress who doesn’t just act, she lives the role.

It’s not the first time in which people from Sónar’s team have participated in the festival’s campaigns. On this occasion I needed someone to play the role of the daughter, I saw Virginia Rousse -Sónar’s booker- sitting at her table and I thought: but… she’s exactly like a young Angela!

We spent two days filming the actresses in the car, giving them inputs on different mother-daughter relationships, so that they could develop their own dialogues. Sometimes, these suggestions were intended to establish conflicts between them and, at other times, for the conversation to deal with topics such as love and death, which was what I was looking for.”

The short film, produced by Advanced Music, is derived from the filming of Sónar 2019 campaign. The festival’s 26th edition will be held on 18, 19 and 20 July in Barcelona. Sónar 2019 will present more than 140 shows by international stars including A$AP Rocky, Skepta, Bad Bunny, Arca, Disclosure DJ Show, Sevdaliza, Paul Kalkbrenner, Maya Jane Coles, Four Tet, Kaytranada, Floating Points (6h set), Amelie Lens, Underworld, Louie Vega & Honey Dijon, Jlin, Kelly Moran or Bad Gyal, among many others.

‘Je te tiens’ was edited by Bernat Vilaplana, with photography by Claudia Mallart and an original soundtrack by composer and conductor Pedro Alcalde, in collaboration with Sergio Caballero.

Data Sheet.
TITLE: ‘Je te tiens’.
YEAR: 2019.
TIMING: 21’.
COUNTRY: Spain.
DIRECTOR: Sergio Caballero.
CAST: Ángela Molina (mother), Virginia Rousse (daughter), Sosaku Miyazaki (snowman).
SCRIPT: Sergio Caballero.
EDITING: Bernat Vilaplana.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Claudia Mallart.
ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK: Pedro Alcalde and Sergio Caballero.
ART DIRECTION: Sergio Caballero.
ARTWORK: Lolo & Sosaku.
PROPS: Gaby García.
PRODUCER: Advanced Music S.L.
IN COLLABORATION WITH: Ranxo Relaxo.

Sergio Caballero (Barcelona, 1966) is, along with Enric Palau and Ricard Robles, the co-founder and co-director of Advanced Music, the parent company of Sónar festival and Sónar+D congress, among other events. Responsible for the festival image, his creativity and artistic restlessness has been shown across different fields, from electronic composition, to fine arts and conceptual art, and has largely fed in to the always controversial and powerful visual image for Sónar campaigns.

In the field of cinematography, his first feature film was ‘Finisterrae’ (2010). In it, he displays a totally personal style and his tastes, his obsessions and his particular sense of humour are highlited. The film was awarded the ‘Tiger Award’ at the 40th International Film Festivalin Rotterdam, received a mention at the ‘Ars Independent’ in Katowice (Poland) and was selected for more than 60 festivals around the world.

His second feature, “The Distance” (2014), is the story of a robbery that mixes suspense with science fiction, using surreal touches of humour resulting in an intriguing and submersive piece of filmmaking.

His third film is the medium-length ‘Ancha es Castilla / N’importe quoi’ (2014). Filmed using puppets made out of food and inspired by Goya’s black paintings, ‘Ancha es Castilla / N’importe quoi’ is a black comedy/horror that tells the story of a girl possessed by the devil who practices exorcisms with her family to expel him.

In the field of fine arts, Caballero has shown inseveral solo exhibitions including ‘Sergio Caballero Famoso en el Mundo Entero’, or ‘Abstracción en el establo’, a return to painting, to more academic abstract expressionism, in this case sharing authorship of the works with a Dutch thoroughbred horse.

Coinciding with the festival’s 25th anniversary in 2018 ‘NO FLYERS NO PÓSTERS. 25 Years of Sónar Image’ provided a retrospective of Sergio Caballero’s particular universe. An exhibition in the form of a large installation that proposed an experiential journey through different works evoking Sónar’s particular iconography.

Since 2004 he has formed a tandem with the composer Pedro Alcalde, with whom he has created numerous musical compositions for the choreography of the dancer Nacho Duato. His works have been performed in important concert halls and opera houses such as the Staatsoper in Berlin, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Teatro de Châtelet in Paris, the Teatro Académico Estatal de Mossovet in Moscow, the New York City Center or the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, among many others.

Sónar, 26 Years Of Music, Creativity And Technology.
Barcelona, 1994: Sónar is born. A pioneering festival in format and content that today has become a world reference event in the fields of music, creativity and technology.

Sónar, which attracts more than 125,000 people every year in Barcelona, is considered a meeting point for global electronic culture and offers the latest innovations in advanced music and its interactions with other musical genres and artistic disciplines.

Created in 2013, Sónar+D is the international congress that annually explores how creativity modifies our present and imagines new futures, in collaboration with researchers, innovators and business leaders. Sónar+D is held together with Sónar and attracts more than 20,000 professionals from all sectors of the creative industries.

Since 2002 Sónar has held more than 70 editions in 33 countries, in cities such as Hong Kong, Istanbul, Tokyo, London, Chicago, New York, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Seoul or Cape Town.

H/T Sónar festival.