Elena Martín Gimeno is a graduate in Audiovisual Communication (2016) by UPF and has just released the film Júlia ist, the portrait of a young female university student’s Erasmus stage in Berlin.

This is her first film as a director, the result of an end-of-degree project, and it has been well received among critics who have granted it various awards and recognitions. It is currently on the billboard at cinemas such as the Renoir Floridablanca or the Verdi.

- How would you summarize Júlia ist?

Julia is a student of architecture who during her third year at uni decides to go to Berlin on an Erasmus. This is how, without really thinking, driven by the inertia of this period, she leaves home for the first time. Full of expectations and lacking in experience, Julia is lost in the middle of a cold, grey Berlin, living an Erasmus that feels a far cry from the adventure she initially envisaged. She slowly builds a life in Berlin and starts to realize who she is in this new setting. She gets to know the big city from the inside and gets caught up by her people, despite the fact that in the end, she has to go back to Barcelona.

- How would you describe the main character? Could we say that she is a kind of autobiographical portrait?

She is an intelligent, restless girl but she finds herself in the middle of a series of changes that make her feel out of place.  Highly overprotected until she leaves home, in Berlin Julia discovers her dependence and her egoism. The portrait of the character is an exaggerated version of us. Exaggerated because we’ve made her an overprotected, more timid, more innocent character. In this way, we found it easier to illustrate the clash of her baggage with her new experience. In the end, what is finally autobiographical are the feelings of the character, but the events and actions are fiction.

- To what extent does the film reflect your university experience?

What the film reflects for me are the questions and concerns that have been present during my time at university. One’s university years are highly intense in which from one month to the next you progress with giant steps, quickly gaining new experiences. In my case, all of these changes came to a head when I went away and, therefore, the doubts that arise in the film surely are a reminder of my inner feelings during those years. 

- What motivated you to depict an Erasmus?

It was a good context, a good narrative resource to compress this first step to adulthood, this first moment where you become aware of your immaturity and you begin to see that it’s difficult to get things under control. Going abroad gives you space to step back and think about how you’re doing things and this part of the journey had not been explained to us in fiction. All of this led us to think that it was an interesting subject for a film.

- Do you think students idealize this experience?

On the contrary, I believe it is undervalued. I probably idealize it more now, having lived it so intensely and having made the film, than before going away when I thought it would be like a summer camp abroad. As students in our early twenties, with good education and knowledge of languages..., we idealize ourselves. And going to an unknown place puts us to the test.

- Does the film portray an individual experience or does it seek to portray a whole generation? 

We based it on our own individual experiences driven by the fact that we had many things in common with other friends who had gone to live abroad. That’s why we always had the expectation that the people who saw it might feel reflected in it if we managed to be honest and generous enough.

- You have received awards and the admiration of the critics. Are you surprised by the reception the film has had?

Greatly! Along the way we have had many doubts and in the end we always guided ourselves by what we really wanted to portray. And we decided to find our own way to do it. We’ve heard many constructive criticisms from people we look up to and we have been very demanding on ourselves. We never regarded the film as being finished, that we had achieved the final version.

When we actually saw that people could go on the journey, were able to connect and could read in it what we had been working on with such care, it was a surprise and very exciting.

- You worked with few resources and a low budget. Did you see this as a limitation or as a creative challenge?

There was no choice but to take it as a creative challenge. It came about from an end-of-degree project. It never occurred to us that we might make it with more resources. Of course, there are things we did without for production reasons and we also involved a lot of people in the project that we would have had to pay in a normal process. Therefore, it is not the best context in which to make a film in general, but it certainly was to make the one we have made. The result is entirely the result of the process, and our process was rather special.

- What you have learned throughout the process?

That what has been most worthwhile is to commit ourselves to a project without knowing how it would turn out. Listening to those who have more experience, arguing, trying things out, discovering magical alchemic moments, getting frustrated again... We have mostly learned to be patient and calm and to cultivate our motivation in a thousand ways, not to let things be until we felt that we had rendered the story we wanted to tell.

- And now, what is your next project?

I am co-directing with Anna Serrano and Marc Salicrú a theatre play coming out in September at the Tàrrega Fair, and I have another theatre play in the autumn. In the audiovisual sector I have a couple of projects pending confirmation that will be a new challenge as they are based on a very different approach to the film.

Trailer