Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado return to the history of the conquest of the Canary Islands with 'Las islas afortunadas' ('The Fortunate Isles'), a drama set in the 15th century that had its world premiere this Tuesday at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
The film participates in the Discovery program and is the second joint feature film by Girón and Delgado after 'Eles transportan a morte' (2021).
Luisa Ahl-Laabiad plays Fátima, a woman who serves a marquis who controls the only source of drinking water in La Graciosa.
When the well dries up and the village begins to rebel, Fátima must embark on a journey in search of an alternative that allows collective survival.
Lou Castel, Grégoire Colin, and Ayoze Carrillo are part of a cast that also includes Jony Rodríguez, Cathaysa Bello, and Héctor Borja.
Girón and Delgado, who also wrote the screenplay, use water scarcity as a starting point to explore the birth of power structures, the exploitation of resources, and the possibilities of solidarity and resistance against them.
The directors have explained that they began to imagine the film in Delgado's family home in Lanzarote, from where La Graciosa can be seen, and that this landscape led them to fantasize about the conquest of the islands and about how fear and scarcity can create systems of domination.
The film thus prolongs a concern already present in 'Eles transportan a morte', set in 1492 and structured around several characters linked to Christopher Columbus's expedition and a parallel story in the Old World, as well as in narratives constructed around Spanish colonial expansion.
That first feature film premiered at the Venice Critics' Week, where it received the award for best technical contribution, and obtained a special mention in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section in San Sebastián. It subsequently screened at festivals such as Rotterdam, Cairo, Mar del Plata, and Viennale.
'Las islas afortunadas' is a co-production between Spain and Greece, shot in Spanish, French, and Arabic.
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