Víctor Erice introduces us to his new film as the narrator of a story very much his own. As José Coronado, protagonist of the film, says, “like a matryoshka, cinema within the cinema“.

That director in fiction, played by Manolo Solo, who sees his filming interrupted, projects Erice’s personal universe in each frame. “He had the tension that this film could not be made the way he wanted to make it.“says Solo, “as he couldn’t do ‘The South’, as he couldn’t do ‘The Haunting of Shanghai.’

The story of ‘The Shanghai Haunting’ was one of the most talked-about stories in Spanish cinema in the 2000s. Producer Andrés Vicente Gómez commissioned Erice to write a script that he would later direct, but it ended up being Fernando Trueba who would take charge of the project. Erice, just when Trueba’s movie was going to be released, published his script.

As part of that “Erice past” is the actress Ana Torrent, whom the filmmaker discovered for ‘The Spirit of the Hive’. “It is because of Víctor that I dedicate myself to cinema,” says Torrent, who also discovers that a good part of what is in his character is a “very great reflection of him and his relationship with me, like the moment in which I I claim that I am Ana. It was a very special moment. I, in fact, When I read the script I was frozen.“.

Helados also left José Coronado and Manolo Solo with the final result. Nobody saw anything until Cannes and they confess that it was an “absolutely tremendous” experience.

This work, which is almost a living testament, was received with seven minutes of applause.