Paula Hernández’s debut film, “Inheritance,” won Best First Feature from Argentina’s National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts. Her next two features, “Rain,” and “Un Amor,” each won multiple awards, including Best Film at the Mannheim Film Festival and Best Adapted Script from the Writers Association, Argentina, respectively. Hernández has also directed several shorts. 

“The Sleepwalkers” will premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival on September 6.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words. 

PH: The film takes place in a country house where an endogamic and ritualistic family gather for New Year’s Eve. Luisa (Érica Rivas) arrives with her teenage daughter (Ornella D’Elia) and her husband (Luis Ziembrowski). In those days of “outdoor confinement” and due to several situations that arise, Luisa immerses herself in a deep existential rethinking, especially related to her daughter’s growth and to how disconcerting the beginning of adolescence can be.

The film is full of misunderstandings among those trying to keep the balance. Dark spots from the adult world permeate the sensibility and vitality of the younger members of the family, [leading to a] painful and irreversible event.

“The Sleepwalkers” pivots between the points of view of mother and daughter, [who are a part of a family of sleepwalkers] in the widest sense of the term. 

W&H: What drew you to this story?

PH: The film is born from an intimate and deep question about family ties. Usually, the starting point of my films has biographical elements, but they are just excuses to reflect on the themes that interest me.

When I became a mother, an infinite number of questions and uncertainties arose about that loving, unique, and incomparable bond, and also about the idea of a “family”– who are you [when you] become a mother? How do you connect with that little new life and with everyone else around it? What is the fair distance between parents and children in that growth? What is a family? How much is there of a choice [when it comes to family compared to what’s mandated by norms]. [What] toxic bonds [are perpetuated] without one asking questions?

Motherhood confronts you with a great questioning of identity and how to connect with the rest of the world. In those dense waters, in that pathology called “family,” is where this film navigates. 

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

PH: Films have the chance to tell a story in narrative terms — a plot that advances — but also they have the possibility of being an emotional experience. This movie has a simple plot, but it focuses especially on the [emotional] states that that plot provokes in the characters, especially in the mother and her daughter.

There is an accumulation of moods in this family that remains isolated in the countryside, sheltered within itself, as if danger could always come from the outside, but never from within.

And that accumulation is sometimes expressed explicitly, but it is also plagued by silences, denials, and omissions that create a lot of toxicity. A violent toxicity that leaks from the beginning, to the disintegration of these [familial] bonds.

So, the intention is film viewers can be emotionally involved in the story and from there, ask themselves about some of the issues that appear in the movie that sometimes one ignores or does not see in their own life.

That’s the beauty of cinema. As filmmaker brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne would say, “In the darkness of the room we as spectators find our other side, the one that daylight does not allow us to see.”

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

PH: I think the hardest thing to find in this film was the tone. We have seen many stories of families who are going to spend New Year’s Eve together exposing problems about inheritance or family/work relationships.

The decision of “The Sleepwalkers” was to tell this problematic view from two different standpoints — that of the mother, and that of her daughter.

Both of them are going through moments of deep change — a daughter who is in the turning point between childhood and adolescence, who has curiosity, desires, and questions about her body. She needs freedom, exploration, and is someone who starts having her own opinion and point of view about the world around her — even on her own decisions that will take her to the limit.

Since the incipient detachment of her daughter, this mother is lost and starts seeing herself as a woman that she doesn’t like. Luisa’s identity crisis touches everything — marriage, family, profession, and especially, her bond with Ana. How to relate to her now? How to let her grow, give her freedom, and take care of her at the same time?

That world I wanted to tell about had to be subtle. It was difficult to find that subtly, but I’m really happy with the results.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made. 

PH: It could be said that many things happened from the very beginning in 2015, when the first ideas of this film appeared, until October 2018, when we shot, that had an impact on the process of “The Sleepwalkers.”

There were many delays in relation to financing: change of producer, change of government in Argentina and subsequently of economic policies, change in the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts funding plan, and freezing of film credits.

Months turned into years because even though we had economic support from the State, we had one last “climatic” wait because this story had to be shot during hot weather.

But we also won two very encouraging funds — [The Swiss Fund film grant], Visions Sud Est, and the Ibermedia Program, [a co-production film fund sponsored by Spain, Portugal, and other nearby countries] — that helped to complete the financing. We also added the Uruguayan co-production of Oriental Features.

“The Sleepwalkers” is an independent production film, produced by Tarea Fina, a great indie production company [based in Bueno Aires] and headed by Juan Pablo Miller. It was shot in five weeks, with a medium budget for the Argentine film industry. 

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

PH: It is always a difficult question for me. I suppose it is the desire to shake internal ghosts, to put them out where I can express myself, and to share a world view with the audience. The beginnings of being a filmmaker are probably the sum of writing and the passion of gazing, and taking pictures.

Having an idea worth telling is not a simple thing to find. But when it appears and one can capture it with their own imagination, it becomes a fulfilling event for me. 

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received? 

PH: When I was very young, I decided to take a plane to the [Berlin International Film Festival] to seek more funding for my first film, which had just received an Opera Prima fund from the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts [for first films]. It had to be shot with no exceptions during that year.

Without any experience, I arrived alone — with a dossier for the film — to that great, gigantic festival. Of course, I didn’t get the money in that record time, but I did get some of the best advice somebody has ever given me.

Jeannine Meraphel told me, “Make the film. Money is never little when you have the desire to make it. If you do well others may invest in your cinema, but you will have to share decisions. This first movie is yours alone, and that gives you a very valuable freedom.”

I don’t think I’ve received any bad advice and if there was any, I don’t think I’ve given it much thought. Generally, I am more driven by intuition, and that has its pros and cons, but I can’t blame anyone for the things that haven’t gone well for me. 

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors? 

PH: Historically, culture — and life in general — has put men in better places than women. Things have slowly been changing in recent years, but there are still many questions to continue thinking about, and things to modify, for women to have the same possibilities as men.

Personally, I have not had so many difficulties to develop my profession. I come from a family that has stimulated my independence since childhood, but of course mine is not a universal parameter. I could say I was privileged.

Anyway, I have no doubt that my development as a film director has been more laborious and demanding than it would have been for a man with the same abilities as mine, of the same generation, etc. It is strange because for a long time I have lived life just accepting that “things were like that” — that one had to always demonstrate that one was able. Also, being especially proud of that feminine capability of tackling many things at the same time — as if that condition put us in a kind of powerful place. While it is a feminine virtue, it is also part of a patriarchal mandate that has put women in that place and men in a very different one.

Luckily, we are in a historical moment, marked by huge learning for everyone. In my opinion the new generations of female directors regard their roles more clearly, compared to what most of us did when we were beginning. We have to learn to listen to them, to look at them because they have an impressive lucidity. So there is not as much advice to give to them, just to tell them to go after their desire. 

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

PH: I will mention two: Agnès Varda for her ability to experiment, for being so innovative, playful, and fresh in her cinema, and for leaving an open path for a lot of women, and Lucrecia Martel, because her thinking transcends the world of cinema. Each frame she shoots, each sound she imagines, each written text, and each enunciated word, make her a great contemporary thinker. 

W&H: What differences have you noticed in the industry since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched? 

PH: What happened with Me Too and with Time’s Up has its references in many other countries of the world. In Argentina, there are currently many very strong feminist movements that find different forms of expression.

To give an example, the debates about abortion in [my country of Argentina] — where practicing it is not yet legal — or the allegations of abuse in the world of cinema and television, in schools, in the university, and in so many other places, the protests denouncing the tremendous amount of femicides, etc., they come from the hand of women, from a flowering of female [political identity].

Feminism has strong roots, but this is a moment of opening for women — historical and exciting. It is a moment of a change of position in relation to our bodies and our place in the world. I think telling men to shift from the patriarchal masculinity mandate is a deep and complex job for everyone, men and women.

We have to reinvent, reconnect, and deconstruct ourselves to rethink the world with parity, abandoning situations of violence from men to women — almost always normalized in the patriarchal and capitalist system in which we live. The stories that become public express this moment of liberation and destabilization of that mandate.

There is a new direction in society, and that happens in cinema too because the industry is beginning to think about parity in crews, in the formation of juries, in discussions about salaries, and especially in how we deal with power relations in this industry. Male supremacy is being questioned and women are attentively observing this.

Like every moment of change, some extreme situations are experienced, but I celebrate that all this is happening.