Film about the religious vocation, awarded in San Sebastián, premieres in Spain

This Friday, October 24, the film “Los Domingos” premieres in Spain. winner of the San Sebastian Film Festivalwhich narrates the religious vocation of a teenager from a respectful and very realistic perspective.

In addition to the festival’s Golden Shell, the film directed and scripted by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, has been recognized by the World Catholic Association for Communication with the SIGNIS Award, which for a decade has distinguished cinematographic works that combine “cinematic merit and a humanistic view, open to dialogue.”

The Doctor in Philosophy and Educational Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid, María Ángeles Almacellas, who is a member of the Circle of Film Writers, director of the course “The art of watching films” at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and director of CinemaNet-Madrid, recognize in this work “an extraordinary artistic quality.”

For Almacellas, the young protagonist, Ainara, who is experiencing a process of discernment towards religious life, “is learning with tears that the human being is weak and that human passions have great strength; she also learns that the times of God are not the times of men, and that the words of God do not sound in the mind, but are a whisper in the heart.”

“It is not a story of good and evil, but of human beings, some open to the experience of God, others closed to anything that transcends man, seen with depth and, above all, seen with tenderness through Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s camera,” continues the specialist, who values ​​the director’s point of view: “She exposes, but does not judge. This is a task that corresponds to the viewer.”

“The cloistered vocation is perhaps one of the most extreme expressions of the search for a place in the world and it soon seemed to me like the perfect excuse to question the family as our natural refuge,” describes the director.

“Whether atheists, agnostics or believers, we need to believe in something to continue. We all make bets of faith. We all bet on something, we commit ourselves to different relationships without any absolute proof that it is real. It feels real and that is enough for us,” he states in the promotional materials provided to the Press.

Ruiz de Azúa confesses that he has “tried to portray this universe from a very rigorous perspective, after having done arduous research,” which is why the film accurately portrays the inner process of the teenager who considers her religious vocation and how this concern is received in different ways in her closest family, her schoolmates, and her circle of friends.

Some respect while others try to dissuade, even with lies. The plot also reflects the inner doubts of the young woman, who is still a teenager who is attracted to some things in the world and who falls into its temptations as part of the process.

Although some scenes contain crude language, typical of certain current youth, the general tone of the film is respectful, without stridency, with a slow, analytical and open look towards the religious mystery, specifically Catholic.