Nominated for Best International Feature
Q&A with Juan José Sáez Domper & Joan Francesc Tomàs Monfort
Exploring the relationship between two teenage boys from Barcelona in 1991, Juanjo is overprotected by his family and Miquel belongs to a difficult one with an absent father. Both will find refuge from the grey world in which they live through their friendship and love of heavy music.
Juanjo, painfully shy and withdrawn, finds himself repeating a high school year, where he meets Miguel – brash and bright from a tough neighbourhood and dysfunctional home.
When Juanjo introduces Miguel to Heavy Metal both their lives change: Miguel finds the identity he’s been yearning for in the rage and complexity of Heavy Metal and Juanjo finds confidence both in helping Miguel and in the new found status his unlikely friendship gives him, unlocking his latent potential as a highly gifted illustrator.
Juanjo and Miguel’s friendship rockets them from their respective grey lives into a colourful, painful, wonderful exploration of identity: from the messy riot of Metal concerts to moments quiet self-contemplation; from broken relationships to the tenderness of new found love – a journey on which we meet a host of characters that are beautifully drawn in every sense of the phrase.
Don’t for one moment be fooled by the simplicity of this film’s animation – its naïveté is its genius – inviting us to complete the illustrations with our own response to these characters, drawing us closer and closer to them as the film progresses, deftly capturing their range of emotions from the raw to the nuanced.
This is a thoughtful, touching film.
Graeme Sanders
