10/23/2019.- Gemma Soriano and Manel Arranz, the directors of La x de Max, presented the film this Saturday at 1:00 pm at Teatro Zorrilla . Produced by Spain’s public broadcaster TVE, the documentary takes viewers on a tour of the personal and literary universe of Valladolid-born writer Miguel Delibes against the backdrop of his lifelong love story with his wife Ángeles de Castro.
The preview was attended by members of the Miguel Delibes Foundation and by practically the entire family of the writer. The latter’s testimonies and anecdotes provide the backbone of the film, which foregrounds the importance of Ángeles de Castro in the novelist’s life and literary work. During the pre-screening presentation of La x de Max, the film’s directors defined their work as “a story about love and family”.
Gemma Soriano and Manel Arranz thanked the Valladolid Festival for the opportunity to present the documentary in Delibes’s birthplace. Soriano declared that “it is a gift to be here at Seminci, to have had the opportunity to complete a project like this one and to have worked with the Delibes de Castro family, who fully trusted us and RTVE”.
The president of the Delibes Foundation and writer’s daughter Elisa Delibes de Castro said about the film: “Gemma and Manel have done a great job in providing a cohesive account. There was a lot of highly heterogeneous material, and they succeeded in the difficult task of putting it together in a documentary that is both interesting and consistent.”
The original idea for La x de Max (an acronym with which the writer used to sign his paintings where M was Miguel, A was Ángeles and X was the mystery that the future could hold for the couple) came from Miguel Delibes de Castro, whom the directors met while working on the TVE documentary series Imprescindibles a couple of years ago. “We then discussed the project with the family and the Foundation and they offered us the opportunity to make this documentary on the occasion of Delibes’s centenary,” said Gemma Soriano.
The production process lasted for 8 months, during which the directors conducted an extensive research and analysis of the writer’s work, with the assistance of the family and the Foundation, and the collaboration of institutions like the Instituto Cervantes . “As the project moved on, we discovered the presence of Delibes in each of his characters,” said Soriano.
In the Q&A that followed the screening the currency of the writer’s message was highlighted. Soriano claimed that “today’s Empty Spain catchphrase was already anticipated by Delibes in his 1979 novel El disputado voto del señor Cayo.”
The directors finally referred to TVE’s commitment to disseminating culture and promoting learning. The documentary will be shown tomorrow, October 27, at 9.30 pm on TVE’s La 2 as part as an installment in the series Imprescindibles and will remain available from the public broadcaster’s online platform (RTVE a la carta) .
