Award-winning Catalan film ‘Júlia ist’ to be released on Friday

The Catalan film ‘Julia ist’, the big winner of the parallel Zonazine Section of the 2017 Málaga Film Festival, will be released next Friday.  ‘Júlia ist’, which has received remarkably good reviews from critics, tells the story of Júlia, a Catalan architecture student who decides to go to Berlin as part of an Erasmus program. She finds the city gray and cold which forces her to compare her expectations with reality. Filmmaker Elena Martín explains that the production took three years to make and that the screening of ‘Júlia ist’ at the Málaga Film Festival was “an amazing moment”. The film was also shown at the D’A Film Festival of Barcelona.

“In the film, Júlia’s trip represents a starting point. It is the first time that she has to make decisions on her own, that she is away from her family, and that she has to face meaningfulness and disorientation,” said Martín. “The emotional journey is quite autobiographical, but the story is fictional. We had to find a narrative structure that allowed this internal trip to come to the surface. Our own experiences were not enough,” admits the filmmaker. The movie’s dialogue is in Catalan and German and aims to portray the challenges of a young generation that is having a hard time finding its place in an increasingly complicated society.

Martín, like Júlia, went to Berlin as part of an Erasmus program. “The actors in the film are friends that I met during that time,” she explains. The film is the result of a Bachelor's Degree Final Project carried out by four students at the Pompeu Fabra University, including Martín. She points out that the project was very collaborative. The actors and heads of department have all contributed their point of view and her musician friends contributed music for the film.