‘Maixabel’ Director Iciar Bollaín Unpacks ‘I’m Nevenka’

“I went to bed in one of the [hotel room] and he lay down beside me,” Nevenka Fernández, a former member of Ponferrada Municipal Council, recounts how she was raped in 2000 by her boss, Ismael Álvarez, then the all-powerful major of the city.

“Why didn’t you leave?” asks Álvarez’s defence attorney in the trial sparked by Fernández when she took Álvarez to court for sexual harassment.

“He was at my side. I couldn’t move,” Fernández replies. 

Sold by Film Factory Ent. and playing in main Competition at this year’s San Sebastián Film Festival, Iciar Bollain’s “I’m Nevenka ” – written with Isa Campo (“Offworld”), her co-scribe on box office hit “Maixabel” – is inspired by true events which led to Álvarez becoming the first politician to be convicted of sexual harassment in Spain, in a landmark judicial sentence 15 years before the #Me Too movement, 

The film is not just a blow-by-blow chronicle of the events behind the ruling. Álvarez delivers a masterclass in emotional manipulation,  from belittlement – he addresses her with the childish “Quenca” – to accusing her of immaturity, of losing it, to threats, to a sudden begging for forgiveness, to sexual abuse. 

Bollaín doesn’t want audiences just to follow the abuse but feel its physical and emotional collateral, fore-fronting a scene at the very beginning of the film when Nevenka (Mireia Oriol, “Alma”) abandons her job, fleeing dressed as a medieval handmaiden at a Ponferrada Templars Night procession, to her still wringing her hands several days later when she first meets her lawyer in Madrid. 

Meanwhile, Bollaín’s direction builds from elegant, plush crowd scenes to classic horror genre tropes with Álvarez a quasi ogre. 

In the run-up to this year’s San Sebastián, Bollaín drilled down on what in many ways is her biggest movie yet, a Movistar Plus+ original film produced with Kowalski Films and Feelgood Media. Backing from Spain’s biggest pay TV/SVOD player, Movistar Plus+ lends it not only financial muscle but promotion clout as “I’m Nevenka” bows in Spain on Sept. 27 via Buena Vista International.

One striking impact of “I’m Nevenka” is a physical sense of Nevenka Fernández’s descent into hell, from the elegant framing of her fairytale first days with Ismael Álvarez to the horror of harassment, caught with the claustrophobia of a genre film, where Álvarez becomes a monster, to a final sense of liberation….

Yes, we wanted to trace her journey. The film begins with a lot of light, it’s luminous. She’s very happy and empowered. She’s brilliant and intelligent. And things go well. So the framing is balanced. Then, as she descends into hell, we twist the frames, work on a sense of claustrophobia. We want audiences to make the journey with her. Her story’s been told. There’s a book and a documentary. What can fiction offer is that you feel this journey and you live it with her.  

“Why did you go through such a calvary. You didn’t have to put up with everything you’ve related today,” Álvarez’s defence attorney asks in the trial. In “I’m Nevenka,” you get to understand her paralysis.

Yes, harassment is very difficult to explain. It can be subtle, and repeated over a long time. And that’s a real challenge because if you repeat the same situation spectators don’t want to watch it the second time round. Some things happened on various occasions but we’ve only told them once. 

As played by Urko Olazabal, Álvarez becomes a kind of monster, in the way he slowly raises his head, or approaches her from behind, or suddenly appears at her door….

Or the way he moves his head forward. Urko’s work really impacted me because in real life he’s far more contained in his gestures. But here’s he’s a winner, extrovert, but when he’s bad, there’s something of a crocodile to him, waiting on a riverbank, looking like a trunk, and then he grabs you. Sometimes his character is brought out by the camera, sometimes it’s Urko’s work, how he acquires a sense of severity, hardly moves and his look is drained of emotion.

And sometimes he plays the victim, asking if Nevenka wants him to make him commit suicide, or belittles her as a little girl….

Yes, poor thing. Machismo’s heavy artillery. And he’s very good at confusion. Sometimes, he’s in a good mood and, suddenly, in one and the same moment, he changes tone, is glacially cold and Nevenka didn’t know how to react, what is expected of her, is paralyzed, for example, whether to get into the car for the wedding.

Your main inspiration are your conversations with her? 

She told us about a lot of them, and how she felt. Some come from Juan José Millás’ non-fiction book, “Hay algo que no es como me dicen,” which was our initial source. And then the testimonies of other women who suffer sexual harassment. You begin to see the same. There’s a pattern. There’s a method.

You also create an almost mythical sense of time, of two worlds – that of a modern Madrid and that of Ponferrada, where events climax at the Ponferrada medieval Templar’s Night, with Nevenka dressed as handmaiden and Álvarez her knight and lord. 

Fiction allows you to shape the sense of a film. I was really interested in this. Ismael Álvarez had a populist touch, he knew how to get along with people, he put himself about. Many people really appreciated him. So how can we tell this. We ended up shooting two processions, one at the beginning of the film, when his relationship with Nevenka is one, and then the Templar’s Night, where she ends up fleeing to her home. In reality, she did so on a normal day. But in dramatic terms the Templars Night helped tell our story.

Movistar Plus+ announced its first movie slate this January, which included “I’m Nevenka.” It was described by Domingo Corral, Movistar Plus+ director of fiction and entertainment content, as “creating event cinema. Something like ‘I’m Nevenka’ demonstrates our commitment to going further than before.” Could you comment?

“Movistar was very supportive of the film, allowing us to engage in a very difficult shoot. We filmed all over, in Bilbao, Zamora and England. The film was also set in 2000, so every detail had to be attended to, from the cars to the buildings to makeup, hairdressing, and costumes. All of that made it more expensive, but they were very supportive of anything we needed. They’ve also got a powerful promotion mechanism at Movistar+ that other Spanish groups just can’t match. For a theatrical film, it’s a huge boost to get marketing on Spanish TV.