J. A. Bayona: 'The success of 'Society of the Snow' is that it is remembered'
Catalan director says awards are 'fickle' and the hard part is turning a film into a phenomenon
J. A. Bayona has arrived in Los Angeles, California with the feeling of having his a job already done.
The Catalan filmmaker has been working for months to promote his latest work 'Society of the Snow' among Hollywood academics, a huge task in an openly anglophone industry that is slowly becoming more permeable to new cinematography, and works in other languages.
Bayona doesn't see his film as favorite in either of the two categories for which it's nominated, but he is content that the film is "loved very much." 'Society of the Snow' has been nominated for Best International Feature Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
"The success of 'Society of the Snow' is that it will be remembered by the public, which is the most difficult thing. Awards are fickle, they leave, but the film stays," he told the Catalan News Agency in Los Angeles on Oscars weekend.
The filmmaker, who has strung together four major productions in seven years, acknowledges that he needs to rest and think about what his next project will be, a break he is set to start from Monday after the buzz of the Oscars is left behind.
Bayona has landed in the United States with "realistic" expectations and without having prepared any speech. He views the UK's 'The Zone of Interest' as a "very strong" competitor for Best International Feature, a film which tells of a "sensitive" topic in Hollywood, the holocaust.
"The numbers speak for themselves, most of the members of the Academy are British," he points out. However, he asserts that they have a "very different" proposal compared to the rest of the competitors, and until the envelope is opened, "you don't know what's going to happen."
The two films represent two "totally opposite" proposals and it is difficult to choose between them: "it's like making a Miró painting compete with a Velázquez."
"In the face of a very difficult situation and thanks to collective effort, the importance of the other is understood to make your own survival possible," says Bayona.
This is the secret of the film, in his opinion, the fact that it has a message that "resonates a lot at a time of our current one, which is focused on individualism."