Llobàs

Adrià (León Martínez) is a homeless, mute and orphaned teenager, who avoids closed spaces and suffers bullying at school. His brooding gaze soon drifts away in another direction. Impermanence and problems follow him, especially with a full moon. He is the protagonist of the second feature film by producer and director Pau Calpe Rufat, Llobàs, premiered in the International Competition of the Warsaw Festival. This new film, a psychological drama inspired by folklore and the social reality of marginal and nomadic lifestyles in rural Spain, adapts the novel Lobisón by Ginés Sánchez into a contained and unconventional story about lycanthropes.

The film shrouds the possible transformation of the protagonist in mystery, showing his thirst for the blood of chickens at night, but his fragile self-perception clashes with the traditional figure of the werewolf. León Martínez's performance prevents the film from bordering on parody, oscillating between genre cinema and social realism.

Edited by Ares Botanch and filmed by Víctor Entrecanales, Llobàs is a film that manages to empathize with the other both in its visual style and in its narrative content. Adrià's older brother, Ramón (Pol López), and his girlfriend Tona (María Rodríguez Soto) live in a van, moving from one town to another while he makes a living through petty theft. Adrià always sleeps outdoors on a mattress without sheets, eating muffins served in the same bowl, like the little dog he rescued from him. The film presents an anti-nuclear family structure and a critique of masculinity, based on the premise that the seventh son of a family becomes a werewolf.

Llobàs offers a look at those who live on the margins of society and challenge normative structures, respecting and questioning his characters in equal measure. This openness reflects the director's humanistic sensibility, hinting at the possibility of transcending what it means to be "human" when the dichotomy between nature and nurture is eliminated.