Spain’s J.A. Bayona, director of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” and two episodes of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” is developing an adaptation of Manuel Chaves Nogales’ short story collection “A sangre y fuego,” now considered by some in Spain as the best portrayal by a Spaniard of its ghastly Spanish Civil War.
Bayona is working with writer-director Agustín Díaz Yanes (“Alatriste,” “Gold,” “Don’t Tempt Me”) to develop a script, based on the book by Chaves Nogales who died in exile in London in 1944.
Talking on stage at the Seville European Film Festival, which opened on Friday, Bayona said he had been developing the project for several years and is “especially interested in the humanist vision” that Chaves Nogales showed in the fiction book.
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Written over 1936-37 by Chaves Nogales in reaction to what he called “the stupidity and cruelty which lorded over Spain” during the Spanish Civil War, practiced by both extreme right and extreme left, “A sangre y fuego” takes in nine different stories.
They range from an account of Republican executions in a Madrid bombarded by Franco’s forces and his fascist allies to an Andalusian marquess who sets out to hunt communists with his personal death squad to a militia woman who saves the life of a right-wing lawyer out of compassion.
Though fiction, all the stories are based on true events, Chaves Nogales wrote in a preface.
Bayona said in Seville that he has been in contact with the writer’s family for some time, and that he got to know the writer’s daughter, Pilar, who died in 2021 at the age of 101. She gave the director her important testimony and other information for the project.
The director spoke in conversation at the festival with Spanish journalist Gerardo Sánchez, director of the La 2 program Días de Cine and Charo Ramos, a journalist and coordinator of the cycle.
Turning his attention to his directing career, Bayona said: “When I was very young, there were TV series about Hitchcock or Truffaut or Kurosawa or Spielberg. And I enjoyed them all the same, they were auteur films, and they were accessible films,” a description which could be applied to his own films.
He added: “Watching began to make me realize that I was much less interested in reality than in cinema, and around it I articulated my reality, I found a refuge. I don’t remember a moment when I decided to become a film director. It was always there, it was a total vocation.”
Bayona began his career in music videos. “It was a school for me. I have always been fascinated by Spielberg and Polanski, directors who practically tackle a different genre in every film they make. So I saw in music videos an opportunity to make my own little films.”
Bayona is currently working on post-production of the feature film “Society of the Snow,” based on the book of the same name by Pablo Vierci. The film, shot in Spanish, tells the story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed into a glacier in the Andes in 1972. The book tells the story of the 16 survivors on board.
The film marks Bayona’s return to Spanish-language filmmaking for the first time in 16 years since his 2006 feature debut, “The Orphanage,” a major hit at that year’s Cannes Festival.
John Hopewell contributed to this article.
