The Sacred Spirit

An eerie pitch black comedy from debut feature filmmaker Chema García Ibarra, whose previous short film Misterio screened at LIFF 2013. While an ongoing investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a little girl is shaking the local community, José Manuel continues his routine. He works in his modest bar, takes care of his mother and attends meetings of the ufology association, where he exchanges information about extraterrestrial activity. When their leader dies unexpectedly, José Manuel is the only person who knows the cosmic secret that could alter the future of humanity.

‘I’m interested in real physical features, regional accents, people wearing their real clothes, real spaces rather than constructed ones, and so on. I’m a documentary filmmaker making fiction movies. I don’t like conventional acting at all: The voices all sound the same to me, I see the same gestures over and over again. As I know that the characters will be played by non-professionals, it determines the scriptwriting process: that is why I make films with characters that speak little, hardly move and do not express “physical” emotions.’

Director Chema Garcia Ibarra, from an interview in Variety.