A director from Navarre, David Arratibel, has made a film that -at least- can be described as surprising. David does not believe, and suddenly discovers that his whole family has been converted.
TEXT-Miguel Castellví
A director from Navarre, David Arratibel, has made a film that -at least- can be described as surprising. David does not believe, and suddenly discovers that his whole family has converted. His sisters María and Paula, each one on her own, discover God. His mother, Pilar, and his brother-in-law, Raul, return to religious practice after years of estrangement. David does not understand, he gets angry.
To resolve the conflict, David Arratibel decides to do what he knows: make a documentary film. "to try to understand how they had come to be certain that God exists.". The result is Conversoa series of conversations with María, Pilar, Paula and Raúl, which, as one critic has said, is not a documentary about faith: "It's about absences, affection, emptiness and distance.". The protagonists say:
Maria (older sister, expressive, passionate, funny): "Well, it'sí, I am what they call 'conversa'.. I would not know how to describe what one becomes when one discovers something as immense as the existence of God. But it turns out that Converso is not - or is not only - a film about converts"..
Paula (younger sister, reflective, physician): "For me, my conversion story is a joyful one, one of those that I feel like sharing; and on the other hand, David gives me all the confidence in the world because he tends to do things right naturally.".
Pilar (mother, with the serenity of years): "I have lived more than forty years involved in political and social life and I am still there, I think as long as I live. But since the Christian commitment of my twenties that encouraged me to fight for a more just society, the enormous disappointment of Marxist philosophies, their historical failure and the search that all people have to find meaning to our existence, have allowed me to find a path that I lost one day".
Raúl (brother-in-law, musician, María's husband): "Nothing I could have imagined more contrary to my way of being than what has happened to me: to be in a movie talking about the most precious vicissitudes of my soul.".
David (director, brother, son, brother-in-law): "It has been an introspective and healing experience that has managed, through conversation, to reunite me with my family, even with those who died and I don't know if they are waiting for me somewhere to resume the conversations we left pending.".
Conversoby David Arratibel, is a film worth seeing. It premiered in Madrid on September 29.
