Interval 36. Charlotte Wells
Tuesday and Aftersun
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior ticket collection at the Museo’s Ticket Offices or on the Museo Reina Sofía website. A maximum of 2 per person. Doors open 30 minutes before the screenings
The Museo Reina Sofía’s ongoing programme of film premieres, Intervals, shows recent works made either during the year in progress or the previous one. This fresh edition is devoted to Charlotte Wells (Scotland, 1987), 2022’s standout film-maker for her debut feature Aftersun (2022), a beautiful and melancholy reflection on family relationships, the real and imaginary dimension of memories and the passing of time.
The film sees a divorced father —played by Paul Mescal, nominated for the Best Actor Award at the 2023 Oscars— and his eleven-year-old daughter —played by Frankie Corio— go on a beach holiday together: a time full of tenderness, mutual understanding and love. Throughout the picture, the film-maker’s strategies enable.
the inner life of each character, particularly the tormented father, to take shape. In the meanwhile, memory bursts through with images recorded from that summery parenthesis of childhood, looked back upon, twenty years later, by the girl as an adult. This unique play with textures —extending across domestic film, nostalgia and subjectivity— reveals the real and imaginary memories of a girl trying to reconcile the memory of the affectionate, fun father who educated her and the laconic man she didn’t know. Aftersun looks at the coming-of-age genre from a different angle: between nostalgia and wound, combining a sophisticated film vocabulary that joins classicism and formal experimentation.
The session gets under way with the screening of Tuesday (2015), the first short film by the director which recounts how a sixteen-year-old girl starts to come to terms with the huge loss of her father and which, along with Aftersun, demonstrates Wells’s skill at working with melodrama.
Programme
Charlotte Wells. Tuesday
UK, 2015, colour, original version in English with Spanish subtitles, DA, 11'
Charlotte Wells. Aftersun
UK and USA, 2022, colour, original version in English with Spanish subtitles, DA, 10'
Credits
Tuesday
- Director:
- Charlotte Wells
- Productor:
- Charlotte Wells
- Script:
- Charlotte Wells
- Cast:
- Megan McGill, Anita Vertesse, David Leith, Fraser Munro
- Artistic direction:
- Samuel Grandchamp
- Editing:
- Christopher Blue
Aftersun
- Director:
- Charlotte Wells
- Productor:
- Charlotte Wells
- Script:
- Charlotte Wells
- Cast:
- Frankie Corio, Paul Mescal and Celia Rowlson-Hall
- Photographic direction:
- Gregory Oke
- Editing:
- Blair McClendon
- Music:
- Oliver Coates
- Sound:
- Vijay Rathinam, Jovan Ajder and Mehmet Aksoy
- Awards:
- 95th Academy Awards, 2023. Nomination for Best Actor, Paul Mescal
76th British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), 2023. Nomination for Best British Film, Best Debut: British Writer, Director or Producer, and Best Actor
British Independent Film Awards (BIFA), 2022. Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound
75th International Cannes Film Festival, 2022. French Touch Jury Prize. Nomination for the Golden Camera Award and Critics’ Week Grand Prix
18th Bucharest International Film Festival (BIFF), 2022. Best Screenplay Award Atlanta Film Critics Circle (AFCC), 2022. Best First Feature Award
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, 2022. Best Debut Feature Award
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, 2022. Best Editing Award
Munich Film Festival, 2022. Best Debut Directo