Chinas

“The idea comes from a personal anecdote: I am the character played by Carolina Yuste. I used to live in Lavapiés, and as a film technician, I had no set schedule, and nothing in the fridge… I’d come home at 11:00 p.m. and head down to the convenience store a Chinese family ran below my apartment. There was always a 9-year-old girl named Lucía. I ended up becoming friends with her and would help her with her homework.

One day, when Lucía wasn’t there, her mother—who spoke very little Spanish—pulled out a letter and asked me, “What is this?” I thought it was a letter from the tax office or the bank, but it turned out to be Lucía’s letter to the Three Kings. Then I thought: “How do I explain to this woman what the Three Kings are—three men on camels following a star?” She just looked at me and said, “I don’t understand anything.”

I explained that Lucía wanted a gift and that all the kids in her class were going to get one. I asked her, please, to buy her a doll. But she said “no,” explaining that their tradition was different—they gave a red envelope with money for Chinese New Year. Every day, I tried to convince her, because I didn’t want to break Lucía’s heart. One day, while walking down the street, I saw a doll at El Corte Inglés and bought it for Lucía. Since I was too embarrassed to give it to her directly, I slipped it into the store’s shutter enclosure.

The casting process was very challenging because I didn’t have much knowledge of Chinese, and it involved street casting and searching within the community. It also happens that the Chinese people who come to Madrid are mostly from a specific province in China, which means they have a particular accent and dialect. I’d see someone from Beijing and think, “Amazing!” but they weren’t from Beijing. Of course, you can’t have a daughter with an Andalusian accent and a mother from the Canary Islands. It might sound trivial, but my casting pool kept shrinking as a result.

I work to ensure that the characters are true to themselves. I don’t ask them to do something unfamiliar. For example, the parents of the little girl who plays Lucía own a bazaar, and she grew up in one. The teenage girl also had a similar crisis with her parents because she was tired of being the one taking the kids to school, handling paperwork, translating Spanish, and working in the restaurant. The mother also owns a bazaar. It was about extrapolating their lives and incorporating them into the film.

The mix with professional actors was also a bit chaotic. Leonor would ask me where I stood because a professional actor is suddenly faced with someone who doesn’t stick to the script. The difference in performances can’t be noticeable, and for a non-professional actor, that’s a real challenge. I had already done something similar with Carolina in Carmen and Lola, and I loved it.”

– Arantxa Echevarría, Director