Shortlisted to represent Switzerland at the Oscars and co-produced by RTS, “Reinas”, released on September 4, is Klaudia Reynicke’s third feature film. Inspired by her own story, the filmmaker tells the story of a mother and her two daughters leaving for the politically chaotic Peru of the 1990s.
Lima, Peru, 1992. Lucía, Aurora and their mother Elena are preparing to leave a country in the midst of social and political chaos. Dreading the farewells to their loved ones and especially to Carlos, their father who has practically disappeared from their lives, the announced exile generates contradictory feelings in the three women.
Between hope, fear, frustration and expectation, Lucía, Aurora and Elena are forced to face everything that leaving entails.
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Film personnel
After “Il Nido” (2016), inspired by the Luca case (a 7-year-old boy found naked, injured and unconscious in the snow in Veysonnaz in Valais) and “Love me tender” (2019), which portrayed a young agoraphobic, “Reinas” is Klaudia Reynicke’s third feature film.
Having grown up between Peru, Switzerland and the United States, the Swiss-Peruvian director confides that she wanted to make a more personal film: “For me, it was a way to reconnect with a country that I no longer knew. Even though I left Peru at the age of 10, I continued to say all my life: ‘I am Peruvian’. I really needed to return to the country of my childhood,” she says in the Vertigo program on September 3.
A shoot full of challenges
Except that Peru in 2024 no longer resembles Peru in the 1990s. This is where a real task begins for the director and her team. They have to find the neighborhoods in Lima that haven’t changed much in thirty years, while also identifying homes for elderly people, likely to contain older furniture and decorations.
>> Watch the interview with Klaudia Reynicke in the 12:45 news:
In the street, too, things are very complicated, explains Klaudia Reynicke: “Since there is no real film industry in Peru, the police do not know the principle of filming permits. As a result, in the street, people continued to pass by, despite the filming. For my editor, it was horrible,” confides Klaudia Reynicke.
While the roles of the father and mother were entrusted to professional actors (Jimena Lindo and Gonzalo Molina), the actors for the two daughters were more difficult to find. Lucía (Abril Gjurinovic) was spotted during a wild casting in a shopping mall. As for the role of the eldest, Aurora, it was finally Luana Vega, the daughter of co-producer Daniel Vega, who convinced Klaudia Reynicke that she was the girl she needed.
All these challenges give a very particular tone to “Reinas”. Oscillating between melancholy and joy, this film tells above all the story of a family that is no longer one, in a particular context, but which could be universal.
Interview by Pierre Philippe Cadert
Web adaptation: Sarah Clément
“Reinas” by Claudia Reynicke, with Abril Gjurinovic, Luana Vega, Jimena Lindo and Gonzalo Molina. An RTS co-production to be seen in French-speaking cinemas from September 4, 2024.
