L’HORA DE LES TORTUGUES

Documentary feature. Spain. In preproduction. Estimated release Oct 2023

L’hora de les tortugues is an intimate film that showcases

To date it has participated in:

RESIDENCIAS WALDEN (ETA March 2022)
CDPAI, Curso de Desarrollo de Proyectos cinematograficos Iberoamericanos
ABYCINE LANZA
ACCIO VIVER
CINEMA URGENT FESTIVAL ALTERNATIVA DE BARCELONA

«I returned to Spain from Australia to watch my father die. While grieving, I watched hours and hours of raw footage he had filmed during my childhood. Slowly, a new film started to form. One about loss, and grief and depression and shame, about the silences we kept as a family. But also, one about the point of view, about using cinema to build realities. My best friend observed that I did not only return for my father and to support my mother, but also to reframe my own story in the best way I know how: through filmmaking. It took me watching his unfinished film to realise how similar we were. He searched for connections and used his camera to do it. The link between storytelling and identity was strong. If you think about it, ‘I’ and ‘eye’ are pronounced in the same way. Equally, being an amateur filmmaker is quite loaded as a statement. In fact, in Spanish, ‘amar’ means ´to love’, which is what my dad, in his amateur filmmaker hat, did through his practice: to love through filming.»

Read more on the directors note.

Original version: Catalan, English and Spanish
Written and directed by: Mariona Guiu
Produced by: Suricata Stories
Executive producers: Ariadna Relea, Mariona Guiu
With the support of ICEC

Cinematography: Ariadna Relea, in color
Found footage: Salvador Guiu
Additional found footage: Elisenda Guiu, Mariona Guiu
Original music: Tolo Prats
Script Editing: Laia Manresa
Script mentors: Tomas Araragay, Inés Bortagaray
Teaser editing: Lupe Pérez