It was pretty quick. The thing about the United States is that it is a very big country, so there are a lot of markets. It’s a matter of working, persevering, being persistent. In Barcelona, I felt like I did not know enough people. Even today, despite having studied there and having a very large professional network in Barcelona, including loads of former classmates from UPF, I still think it is easier to find work here than there, because the market is just bigger.

I guess I was also a little sick of how things were, and I was looking for an adventure. My partner also wanted to move here, to California.

The idea of the American dream may be idealized in film, but doors really do open for you here in a way that does not happen in other places. The only problem this country has is the visa issue; you have to find a way to get one in order to stay. If you can make that happen – and luck is a big factor – there is work.

Yes, exactly. I actually spent a lot of years freelancing in Los Angeles, working for Catalan and Spanish media, as well as some Central and South American outlets, writing in Catalan and Spanish about film.

Once there, you have access to certain circles that would otherwise be much harder to break into. I think it’s still the Mecca of cinema. It is a great place to go. 

I haven’t given it too much thought; I’m very happy here. I’ve always thought that going back to Barcelona would be very difficult for me, that I would have a hard time finding work, whereas here they treat me very well. Once I managed to get the visa that allowed me to work for US media, I found work, and they really treat you much better.

I’m now a member of a couple of prestigious press associations, and these are things I would have to give up if I were to leave. I hadn’t really considered it until the pandemic. That moment made Barcelona seem very far away. It had already seemed that way when I first moved here, because I wasn’t earning much and flying was very expensive. But then they added some direct flights and a few cheaper ones, and it felt closer.

But the two years of the pandemic pushed me even further away. I spent more than two years without being able to go home to see my family, and now I really have considered spending a few more years building my career here and then going back to Barcelona. Something has changed that has made me miss my home.

One thing about being here is that you end up bonding with people in situations similar to your own. If someone’s from the same city, the bond is even stronger. In the case of UPF, a colleague of mine, Martín Piñol, a book author, came to Los Angeles for a while. He is the world’s most outgoing person, and he introduced me to another UPF student, Marta Gené Camps, a screenwriter. She lives in Los Angeles, and we’ve known each other and been friends for years. Now we are both in the new UPF Alumni California chapter. And yes, we have kept in touch and we do have things in common, not just because we both went to UPF, but because she knows how hard this can be sometimes. And when they added the direct flight to Barcelona, we shared it.

That’s very interesting, because she’s a screenwriter who has worked on programmes like Manifest and Shades of Blue, so she writes from the inside, whereas I’m a film and television critic who writes from the outside, who interviews people like her.

There’s a third person, Xavi Martínez Salcedo. He has a very interesting profile, because he works in human resources, which strays a bit from the usual profile you find here – Silicon Valley engineers or people who work in Hollywood – which I think is great.

I think spending so many years here has changed a part of my brain. Networking is something I never used to attach any importance to, but now I am fully aware of how important it is. I feel like I have a network here, which is great, like if I need anything, I know who to talk to. I have one in Barcelona, too, because a lot of my old friends and colleagues are there, but it’s different, because I haven’t worked there for years.

On the one hand, it’s for this networking with people who do all kinds of things, not necessarily in the same industry, but who can be just as interesting to meet.

Another thing I like, and that you see a lot in this country, is the idea of mentorships. It’s relatively easy at any point in your career here to say you would like to work with a mentor who is in a given situation to see how he or she got there. I had a mentor who helped me a lot with taking that step, with daring to write in English, and anything that tries to encourage that kind of relationship is very positive.

I think spending so many years here has changed a part of my brain. Networking is something I never used to attach any importance to, but now I am fully aware of how important it is.

We’ve done very little, so far. We went through the whole process of submitting our candidacy, and now we’re waiting on some bureaucratic stuff. We’ve begun to do a few things, but, for now, it’s all very small and ‘close-knit’. One thing that would be helpful, and that we do not yet have, is a database of everyone from UPF that the Alumni programme has detected in California. That way, we could reach out to them.

Right now, there are only 16 members, but the idea is to keep growing it.

The number one issue is your visa, because even if you have a one-year visa, if you’re planning to stay, you should already be thinking about what’s going to happen when that year is up and when you should apply for an extension.

The second thing is not to be afraid and to ask a lot of questions, because people are generally quite open. I feel like both professionals and university lecturers are all very approachable.

It’s good to dream, realistically, but I think this is a country where you can be ambitious, precisely because it’s so big and has such a large market. These days there’s a lot of talk about whether or not it’s really a meritocracy, because it’s true that things are much easier in this country if you’re white. But for all the problems there may be with racism, sexism and discrimination in general, I still think there is a lot more meritocracy here than in other places.

There have been a lot of very significant changes, a lot of really tough conversations with newsrooms and social media marketing teams, for example. One thing that we’ve been doing very conscientiously since 2019-2020 is to pay really close attention to the promotional image that will appear on social media or the website homepage for any articles we publish, to make sure there is diverse representation. You can’t always be showing just young, white people in a world where no one has any sort of disability.

Also, when I’m considering covering something – because it’s impossible to talk about every programme and film – I try to ensure diversity, to make sure that I’m not always talking about the same thing. We have very open conversations, especially internally, with our team, where we ask things like, ‘Should this headline be worded like this? Is it politically correct?’ We are always very careful about how we are doing things, including in terms of language and how we write. We have stopped using some words, and we’re incorporating others.

Whenever I get a press release, a good quarter of the time, my reaction is, ‘Oh god, another sequel, another superhero movie.’ For a few years now, it feels like two types of films have predominated. There are the blockbusters, which need to have intellectual property, a brand, what Americans call a household name, whether it’s superheroes or video-game characters, something that makes it really easy to promote the film, because you’re building on this well-known brand. And then there are the independent films that no one’s seen.

With the advent of streaming – and, to some extent, the pandemic, which further accelerated things – we may be witnessing the return of all those other kinds of films in the middle. We’re at a point now where things are still evolving, because not everything really needs a theatrical release. I think studios are still on the fence because streaming releases pose their own financial challenges.

Actually, I used to only write about film, but then I started writing about television programmes. And I’m doing that more and more. Honestly, these days, most of the time I prefer it, because they end up being things that interest me more as a viewer. 

It’s complicated. All the old multiplexes that used to get all the blockbusters first have proved that they can survive. But the more grown-up audiences, the people who maybe were never going to see those films to begin with, who went to see other things... that’s where things get a bit more complicated.

There is a studio called A24 that releases mainly independent films, but targeting a younger, rather than an older audience. And they’ve found a way to keep releasing films in cinemas and get people to go to see them, because they are incredibly good at promoting them and, also, because some of their films really do demand the full cinematic experience. In general, though, depending on the film, it can be very tricky. 

I think there is a market. J. A. Bayona and Jaume Collet-Serra have already been working here for years. But it’s true that, for a couple of years now, there has been more emphasis on films directed by women. In fact, I’m on a women’s committee at one of the press organizations I belong to, Critics Choice, that just launched the Seal of Female Empowerment in Entertainment or SOFEE award, which basically recognizes authentic films and television programmes written by, directed by and starring women. I have the sense that there’s a lot more representation if you stop to look.

In fact, television always gets there first. If you look at a lot of the new programmes coming out these days, there are a lot more women – and not just white women – directing and writing episodes, working as showrunners, starring, etc. And that will eventually make its way into film.

Television always gets there first. If you look at a lot of the new programmes coming out these days, there are a lot more women – and not just white women – directing and writing episodes, working as showrunners, starring, etc. And that will eventually make its way into film.

You might not have to stay for 16 years like I have, but, yes, because it really helps put certain things about your culture into perspective, things you hadn’t realize what they were like. I’d like to think that after all these years here, I’ve picked up some of the good things I like about Californian culture and kept some of the good things I like about Catalan and Spanish culture, and, at the same time, left behind some of the other things I like less. Most of all, it really helps put into perspective a lot of things that you’d simply taken for granted had to be the way they were because they always have been.

I think I’m much more determined now; I’m no longer afraid of certain things. I’m very pragmatic. It helped me come out of my shell, as I used to be quite introverted. Pragmatism is one of the things I owe most to this country; there’s a real problem-solving culture here.

I have very fond memories of it. I made lifelong friends and, in terms of education, it was a very interesting few years in which I learnt a lot. Obviously, I’ve continued to learn over the years, because you never stop learning and, as a professional, you are constantly being exposed to new things. But I learnt a lot, and that laid the foundations for what I’ve done since. Really, I have a very good memory of it.