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Roberto Bueso’s “El Mal Padre” (“The Bad Father”), a San Sebastian main competition contender sold by Film Factory, marks a tragicomic take on the mistakes of parenthood, and one son’s struggle not to repeat them.
Eduard
Fernández (“Marco,” 2024), a four-time Goya winner and recent recipient of Spain’s National Cinematography Award, plays Santiago Balmes, a celebrated writer and academic who, in the face of a terminal diagnosis, calls together his estranged adult children with the hope of healing.
What emerges is a portrait of a stubborn father trying to make amends, and a quiet reckoning with how futile that effort can be when it comes too late. Fernández leads a cast that includes Adam Jezierski (“Vota Juan,” 2019), Francesco Carril (“The New Years,” 2024), and Meritxell Calvo (“Burning Body,” 2023).
Bueso co-wrote the film with Óscar Díaz Cruz. It is his third feature after “La Banda” (2019) and “Llenos de Gracia” (2022), both of which played Spain’s Málaga Festival, and marked his first time in San Sebastián’s main competition.
“El Mal Padre” is produced by Fernando Bovaira’s MOD Producciones and MOD Pictures alongside Misent Producciones and Atresmedia Cine, with the participation of Atresmedia, Netflix and Valencian public broadcaster À Punt, and financing from Spain’s ICAA.
Alex Catalán served as cinematographer. Caramel Films will release the film in Spanish theaters on Nov. 20.
Variety spoke with Bueso about “El Mal Padre.”
This film was born out of losing your father and becoming one yourself. How did making the film help you process these difficult life changes?
It has been a very positive therapeutic process. Starting from my own experience gives you a solid foundation to work with conviction and honesty. Óscar Díaz Cruz, my writing partner, also became a father for the first time while we were looking for the story. We realized that the questions we were asking ourselves had to do with the fear of facing fatherhood. Our generation has reflected on and come to realize that many of the ideas held by the previous generation about the role of men, and therefore of fathers, can no longer be applied to ours. We wanted to try to bring those ideas into dialogue.
Eduard Fernández has talked about how hard it was to play someone this unlikeable. What did you two decide was the line for the character?
We never talked about specific red lines. We wanted the character to be very emotionally clumsy. He had made a lot of mistakes on an emotional level, causing a great deal of pain around him, but he still tried to justify himself. We didn’t want to judge the character. For Eduard and me, it was important to maintain the character’s harshness, while also giving him charisma and a sense of humor. We wanted to show his mistakes and contradictions, but also give him the opportunity to show his vulnerability and honestly reflect on the damage he had caused the people around him. It was a beautiful process, searching for that balance together with Eduard.
In terms of scale, “El Mal Padre” is a more intimate film than your first two. How have you found the shift in production?
This film has ended up being closer to me. I’m very fond of my first two films, but I think that with this third one I’ve been able to go deeper into my own vision and sensibility. Every project is shaped by the circumstances in which it comes to life. With this film, I’ve dealt with themes that were closer to me and that involved greater maturity. In any case, I always try to be honest about what I’m telling.
The film was shot entirely in the Comunidad Valenciana. Why was filming there important to the tone and story?
I’m from Valencia, and I know my homeland very well. Its landscapes are part of my emotional memory. I remember my childhood summers with a particular kind of light, with the presence of the sea and the rocks. For me, it has been a privilege to share that childhood Arcadia with the characters in the film, especially the children. I wanted them to return to the place where their family was still together before everything fell apart, and for it to be precisely there that they would have the opportunity to recreate a similar image, even if only for a moment.
